As the President of Lithuania Gitan Nauseda pointed out on Tuesday, commenting on the proposal of the Ministry of the Interior to declare a state of emergency in border municipalities, an emergency situation in Lithuania could be introduced only in case of extreme urgency, but there is no such need at present existing resources.
“I am following the situation closely and I see a lot of reserves that could be used by the Ministry of the Interior and the State Border Guard Service to solve problems. Only in an extreme situation, and of course in consultation with the public and explaining, can we return to the state of emergency.” he told reporters.
As Nauseda said, in dealing with the migration crisis, the government must consult with local communities and municipalities, but the conflicts experienced these days show that “from the very beginning, we have been talking about positions of strength.
My main message is that at the moment we have not taken the opportunity to convince our citizens and talk to them normally, trying to explain the meaning of our decisions, goals, and the contribution we need from each municipality, “said the President, calling not to look for non-existent internal enemies “.
It has already been reported that the Ministry of the Interior issued a proposal to the government to consider declaring a state of emergency in border municipalities after the incident in Šalčininkai district on Monday, where protests were held against plans to set up a tent camp in the Rūdninkai landfill to accommodate one and a half thousand illegal migrants. More than a hundred protesters blocked the way to the landfill, later some of them stormed the landfill site, set fire to the tires and resisted the police, who had to use force to disperse them.
Interior Minister Agne Bilotaite described the incident at a press conference on Tuesday as an abusive provocation and blatantly anti-government action, pointing out that the landfill is a fenced, guarded and surveillance-equipped militarized facility far from populated areas and used for public security training. According to her, due to all the above circumstances, it is not clear what the protesters really defended when blocking the roads to the landfill site.
The minister also said that he had asked law enforcement agencies and intelligence services to open an investigation into the resistance to the police and had also approached the Department of Homeland Security, believing that the events were “a pre-planned and well-organized action against the state”.
In a comment sent to the BNS news agency on Tuesday, the Department of Homeland Security said it had not yet recorded the activities of anti-government organizations or armed groups or deliberately carried out foreign tasks contrary to Lithuania’s interests, but more broadly acknowledged that aggressive opposition to law enforcement posed a potential threat to human rights. security and does not serve the public and national interests.
Recently, the flow of illegal migrants across the Lithuanian-Belarusian border has been growing sharply. Since the beginning of this year, the total number of detained illegal immigrants has reached 2,839 – 35 times more than during the whole of last year. Most of the foreigners detained this year in Lithuania have come from Middle Eastern or African countries and want to go further to Western Europe.
Lithuanian officials believe that the Belarussian regime is deliberately facilitating the flow of migrants across the border.
It has already been reported that in early July, in response to a sharp increase in the flow of illegal migrants across the Belarusian border, the Lithuanian government decided to declare a state of emergency. As Bilotaite explained at the time, this decision was taken not because the level of threat had increased, but because it was easier to make decisions on logistics, funding and other issues.
In turn, an emergency situation in Lithuania can be established if a crisis or emergency situation has arisen in the country that threatens the constitutional order and public peace and these threats cannot be prevented without using the special instruments provided for in the constitution and laws. It is a special legal regime that allows for the temporary restriction of the rights and freedoms of natural persons, including the introduction of a commander’s hour.
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