{"id":22644,"date":"2023-04-25T10:45:16","date_gmt":"2023-04-25T10:45:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/lithuania-passes-legislation-allowing\/"},"modified":"2023-04-25T10:48:29","modified_gmt":"2023-04-25T10:48:29","slug":"lithuania-passes-legislation-allowing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/lithuania-passes-legislation-allowing\/","title":{"rendered":"Lithuania passes legislation allowing border guards to turn back migrants"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By Andrius Sytas<\/p>\n<p>VILNIUS (Reuters) &#8211;     Lithuania&#8217;s parliament passed legislation on Tuesday allowing border guards to turn back migrants who cross its frontier illegally, brushing away concerns from human rights organizations.<\/p>\n<p>Lithuania, Poland and Latvia have reported a sharp increase since 2021 in migrants from countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan trying to cross their borders from Belarus, in what they and Brussels have said was a form of hybrid warfare designed to put pressure on the European Union over sanctions it imposed on Minsk.<\/p>\n<p>Lithuanian border guards have already been pushing back migrants, based on a government regulation from August 2021, which has now been voted into a law.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;In this geopolitical context we don&#8217;t have an alternative: we must protect ourselves, and we need tools for that,&#8221; interior minister Agne Bilotaite told the parliament.<\/p>\n<p>The legislation includes provisions whereby migrants caught entering illegally can be turned back on the decision of the local border guard chief, without the possibility of an appeal.<\/p>\n<p>Under international law, migrants have a right to claim asylum and it is forbidden to send potential asylum-seekers back to where their lives or well-being might be in danger.<\/p>\n<p>Critics such as Amnesty International say the law risks denying asylum to people in need of protection.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I have received consistent worrying reports of patterns of violence and other human rights violations committed against migrants, including in the context of pushbacks at Lithuania&#8217;s border with Belarus,&#8221; Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights Dunja Mijatovic said in a statement.<\/p>\n<p>The pushbacks are encouraging criminal networks that ferry the migrants clandestinely, local migrant rights group Siena argued.<\/p>\n<p>Lithuania has erected a 4-metre (13-foot) fence along 550 kilometres (340 miles) of its 690-km border with Belarus, topped with razor wire. Almost 900 migrants entered and were turned away this year, many after cutting the fence, a border guard spokesperson said.<\/p>\n<p \/>\n<p> (Reporting by Andrius Sytas in Vilnius, editing by Terje Solsvik and Alex Richardson)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/lithuania-passes-legislation-allowing\/file-photo-lithuanias-interior-minister-agne-bilotaite-visits-lithuania-poland-belarus-border\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-content\/uploads\/Reuters_Direct_Media\/USOnlineReportWorldNews\/tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ3O0DO-VIEWIMAGE.jpg\" alt=\"tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ3O0DO-VIEWIMAGE\"><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Andrius Sytas VILNIUS (Reuters) &#8211; Lithuania&#8217;s parliament passed legislation on Tuesday allowing border guards to turn back migrants who cross its frontier illegally, brushing away concerns from human rights organizations. Lithuania, Poland and Latvia have reported a sharp increase since 2021 in migrants from countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan trying to cross their [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":22645,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1222],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-u-s-world-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-content\/uploads\/Reuters_Direct_Media\/USOnlineReportWorldNews\/tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ3O0DO-VIEWIMAGE.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22644"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22644\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22646,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22644\/revisions\/22646"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}