Lithuania tightens its Belarusian border with a hard wire to prevent migrants Reuters

By Andrius Sytas

VILNIUS (Reuters) – Lithuania began building a 550-kilometer (320-mile) wire fence on its border with Belarus on Friday after Belarusian authorities allegedly turned to migrants from abroad to send it illegally to the European Union.

The government has said it will cost the military-style wire coil 4.9 million euros ($ 5.81 million) to cross and scroll through most of the border as it passes over sparsely populated areas and large stretches of forest and swamp.

Later, the fence will be reinforced with a two-meter (6.5 ft) high border fence, overlaid with a razor wire, which will cost an additional 41 million euros, the Interior Ministry said.

Hundreds of migrants have crossed from Belarus in recent days, most of them Iraqis, Lithuania said.

Belarus decided in May to allow migrants to enter Lithuania as revenge for sanctions imposed by the bloc after Minsk had to land a Ryanair flight on its land and arrest a dissident blogger on board.

“If anyone thinks that we will close our border with Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Ukraine and become a safe haven for those going to Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Tunis and Africa – if anyone thinks so, he is wrong, to say the least.” said Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko on Tuesday.

Belarus is guarding the border as far as it is now “profitable,” and as far as it can afford, the president said.

Lithuania responded on Wednesday by announcing that it would put up a border fence and deploy troops to prevent illegal crossing of migrants into its territory.

In a related move, the Lithuanian parliament will meet on Tuesday to urgently approve legislation that streamlines reviews of asylum applications, including summarizing their initial review to more than 10 days, Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte said.

The bill says all people who crossed the border illegally would be locked up, ending with occasional short trips outside the currently permitted arrests.

Just over 1,500 people have crossed the border illegally from Belarus this year, 900 of whom came in the first nine days of July.

The first part of the new barrier, which will end on Friday, will be 500 meters long and 1.8 meters high, a spokesman for army chief Ruta Montvile told Reuters.

Simonyte told the national broadcaster that he did not expect migrants from Belarus to come down on their own.

“Since the Belarusian regime is earning money from this person for visa charges and I think it gets other income from them as well – it would be difficult to expect a positive trend without additional resources of influence,” he said.

Simonyte said on Wednesday that Belarus was offering flights to migrants to Minsk, citing documents found at least one migrant who arrived in Lithuania. People said the main airport to go to Belarus was Baghdad and the foreign minister said people were also coming to Turkey.

The Lithuania-Belarus border covers 679 km (420 miles). In previous years, about 78 km (48 miles) were fenced off, and about 258 km (160 miles) are electronically controlled, according to the interior ministry.

($ 1 = 0.8433 euro)