Martin Lemberg-Pedersen, associate professor in Global Refugee Studies at Aalborg University, thinks the videos should “cause concern” among EU leaders that have equipped the border guards with patrol and surveillance equipment.
“The videos are frightening to watch. If this is how Belarusian border police act against migrants, then the EU and its member states are equipping a regime that showcases its ‘shoot first, ask later’ control practise against migrants and refugees,” says Lemberg-Pedersen.
In an email, official representative of the State Border Committee of the Republic of Belarus Anton Bychkovskiy says:
“As for the video showing the detainment of persons in a car, Belarusian officers acted in strict accordance with the law, because the border guards had information concerning the committing of serious criminal offense related to illegal migration and human trafficking. Before starting the investigation (interviewing detainees), it was not possible to identify victims, organizers and facilitators of this heinous crime.”
Returned to the torturers
The migrants and refugees in the video are not alone. Refugees from Chechnya, a Russian republic where human rights organisations and media have documented torture and disappearances, have also suffered rough treatment at the hands of the Belarus border guards.
In their reports on Belarus report for 2017 and 2018, Amnesty International states that Belarus lacks “a functioning asylum system and repeatedly handed over individuals seeking international protection to authorities of countries where they were at real risk of torture or other ill-treatment”.
In collaboration with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), Danwatch have examined two cases in which Belarusian border guards ignored requests for asylum from Chechen refugees, before returning the refugees to Russia. According to Josephine Liebl, Head of International Advocacy at the European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE), this practice directly violates international refugee law.
“States are required to grant access to an asylum procedure to those seeking protection under both international law and the European Union asylum acquis. The directive specifies obligations to inform people in need of protection of the possibility to apply for asylum, as well as to promptly register claims when they are made,” she says.
The pushback of Chechens to Russian authorities is also a violation of the so-called principle of “non-refoulement”, which is a cornerstone of international refugee protection and international human rights law.
“This principle prohibits states from transferring or removing individuals from their jurisdiction or effective control when there are substantial grounds for believing that the person would be at risk of irreparable harm upon return, including persecution, torture, ill-treatment or other serious human rights violations,” says Liebl.
According to ECRE, Belarus violates these principles.
“While we do not know the exact facts of the case, the practice of Belarusian border guards handing over Chechens to Russian authorities without giving them the opportunity to claim asylum in Belarus violates the principle of non refoulement.”
Seems like window-dressing
The EU leaders are increasingly choosing to support human rights violators with border control equipment, in order to to curb the influx of refugees and migrants says Martin Lemberg-Pedersen.
“Criticism of the EU’s policy of supplying border control equipment to police states or states with poor human rights records is not new. But instead of ending the support, European countries have chosen to escalate their support to a string of problematic regimes, such as Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Morocco, Turkey or Saudi Arabia over the past decade,” he says.
“It therefore seems an awful lot like window dressing when the EU on the one hand talks about fundamental rights, while simultaneously increasing its involvement with countries and regimes that act in direct violation of those same rights.”