Belarus opposition leader warns of border migration crisis

By VANESSA GERA
Associated Press

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya has called for the global community to stop a “humanitarian catastrophe” which she said is being created by the Belarusian regime as it facilitates largescale migration into the European Union. Thousands of migrants from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Africa have been lured to Belarus on tourist visas and encouraged to cross into Poland, Lithuania, and to a lesser extent Latvia. All three are EU nations that border Belarus. Several migrants recently died from exhaustion as they tried to get from Belarus to Poland across an area of forests and swamps. Tsikhanouskaya warned that as winter approaches, she fears that those deaths “will grow into dozens.”