EU has responsibility to guarantee right to asylum: MP

The European Union has a responsibility to guarantee the right to claim asylum, a member of the European parliament told Rudaw as thousands of migrants remain embroiled in a crisis along Belarus' western borders.

"I think that there is a humanitarian crisis. We see that people are dying. It is freezing cold and even families with small children are being met with violence from the Lukashenko side, but unfortunately also from the Polish side of the border," said Nikolaj Villumsen, a Danish representative of the Left group in the European Parliament, referring to Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko.

Thousands of migrants, mostly from the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, have been stuck on the Belarusian borders with Poland, Lituania, and Latvia in recent months.

Hundreds returned to Erbil early Saturday morning on the fourth repatriation flight organized by both the Kurdish and Iraqi governments. A fifth flight is scheduled to land later in the day.

"We have an unacceptable situation where the EU should live up to its responsibility to human rights and secure the right to seek asylum, and on the other hand put pressure on the Lukashenko regime through targeted sanctions," the parliamentarian told Rudaw. European countries, as well as Iraq and the Kurdistan Region, have accused Lukashenko of exploiting the migrants in a political battle of the wills with the European Union.

Andreas Schieder, a member of the Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament from Denmark, also criticized the treatment of migrants at the border.

READ MORE: https://www.rudaw.net/english/world/271120211