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Border fence with Belarus: Lithuania wants to continue strict migration policy
Photo: JANIS LAIZANS / REUTERS
Thousands of refugees from the Middle East, mainly from the Kurdish regions of Iraq, have been trying to reach the European Union via Belarus since last summer.
Lithuania has erected a fence on its border with Belarus to stop refugees.
Neighboring Poland is building a similar bulwark against unwanted migration.
Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte has now announced to journalists that the four meter high barbed wire barrier has been completed.
The fence runs for around 550 kilometers along the 700-kilometer border.
Simonyte said it was "technically impossible" to erect a barrier along the entire border, which also runs through lakes, rivers and swamps.
Illegal immigration to the EU country has risen sharply this year.
Around 4,200 people, mostly from the Middle East and Africa, crossed the border from Belarus to Lithuania.
The West accuses Belarus and its ally Russia of manipulating the refugee movements and sees this as part of "hybrid" warfare.
The government in Minsk rejects the accusation.
Lithuania's Prime Minister Simonyte announced that her government would continue the strict immigration policy.
The government in Vilnius was accused of illegally rejecting asylum seekers, so-called pushbacks.
On Saturday, Lithuanian border guards refused 125 migrants to cross the border.
This was the highest number since the beginning of the year.
Poland completed its border wall to neighboring Belarus at the end of June.
The government in Warsaw also changed the law and allowed migrants to be actively pushed back across the border.
These so-called pushbacks are illegal under international law because they use force to prevent people from applying for asylum.
muk/AFP
