Belarusian officials’ allegations of migrants who were brutally beaten and mutilated on the Lithuanian side of the border between the two countries and corpses transferred on the Belarusian side are absurd misinformation, which raises concerns about other provocations, the Lithuanian State Border Guard Service (SBGS) said on Monday.
“Belarusian officials are spreading statements that have nothing to do with reality, accusing Lithuanian border guards of cruelty to migrants, their beating to death and even the” transfer “of corpses to the Belarusian side. in the notice circulated.
It recalls that the Belarusian authorities have previously tried to stage the beating, mutilation or even death of migrants in an attempt to blame Lithuania and Poland for such inhuman treatment, and that similar provocations are possible again.
“It cannot be ruled out that Belarusian structures on the Lithuanian border may resort to other provocations beyond common sense. Such a rather primitive tactic – to blame Lithuania and other EU countries for the migrant crisis on the Belarusian border – is not new,” the border guard said.
The statement of the SBGS was distributed in response to the accusations made by the authoritarian leader of the Belarusian regime, Alexander Lukashenko, that the Lithuanian border guards had displaced the bodies of migrants on the Belarusian side.
“These ugly people have been killed during the migration crisis,” Lukashenko said earlier.
“They threw a corpse on our side last night, but another corpse was found tonight. The same handwriting. A dead or perhaps half-dead man is dragged into a sleeping bag and dropped off at the border. Border guards find him dead,” he said. Anatoly Lapa informed him about three more migrants who were allegedly found in abandoned homes and were no longer able to leave.
“Yesterday, as far as I know, the border guards found three people in a house. They found the body and then noticed three more sleeping bags, started searching. They crawled. They crawled several hundred meters, found a hut. “amputate the legs, if found alive at all,” Lukashenko said. “And it happened at the Lithuanian border! Imagine it – and they are Democrats! Some kind of dishonesty has to go to kill people and transfer them to the neighboring territory. It is such an action. Why? What is behind it? I think the investigators will find out. “
According to the authoritarian Belarusian leader, the entire migration crisis has in fact been provoked by the West in order to divert the attention of the Belarusian army in the event of a conflict with Ukraine.
“They are probably worried that the flow of migrants to us has decreased because, as we have seen, they have used these people to solve their internal problems and keep us under pressure,” she was quoted as saying by Belarus’s state news agency BelTA. strategic meeting in the Ministry of Defense.
“They understand well that if Ukraine tries to provoke a conflict with Russia, Belarus will not be left out, so the Belarusian army needs to be kept under pressure at the western borders with Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, as well as in the south, strengthening Ukraine’s border,” Lukashenko said. this situation “, but has ordered the General Staff of the Armed Forces to draw up a” plan of response to possible aggression and illegal activities “.
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