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A migração como arma infographic
A infografia mostra um historial da migração usada como arma.
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POLÍTICA

Usar os migrantes como arma

By Duncan Mil

December 6, 2021 - Responsáveis da UE acusaram Alexander Lukashenko, o líder autocrático da Bielorrússia, de chamar migrantes para o país e de os incentivar a atravessar as fronteiras da UE para destabilizar o bloco.

The most recent use of migrants as coercive “weapons” in a crisis between countries is currently happening at the border between the European Union and Belarus, where thousands of migrants are stranded.

These people -- mainly from the Middle East -- have suffered inhumane conditions in increasingly freezing forests. At least 12 died trying to enter the EU.

Western authorities believe that Lukashenko has sent the migrants to the border in response to international sanctions that he received for human rights abuses.

When Lukashenko visited a group of migrants stranded on Belarus’s border with Poland on November 26, he urged them to keep trying. “If you want to go west, we won’t choke you, grab and beat you. It is your choice. Go across,” Belarus’s leader told the group.

“Go! That’s the whole philosophy. I know that what I said will not please everyone, especially abroad, but it is true, they should know the truth,” Lukashenko told migrants who had gathered outside a warehouse near Bruzgi.

The use of migration as a tool of aggression or intimidation is neither new nor rare. Since 1951 there have been at least 76 such cases, says Kelly Greenhill, a political scientist at SOAS University in London.

Sources
PUBLISHED: 06/12/2021; STORY: Graphic News; PICTURES: Getty Images
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