SULAIMANI (ESTA) — Iraqi foreign minister Fuad Hussein and German foreign ministry state secretary Miguel Berger on Sunday expressed their support for voluntary return of migrants stranded on the border between Belarus and Poland.
Iraqis, especially Kurds, have made up a significant number of the estimated 4,000 migrants waiting in freezing forests and trying to cross into Lithuania, Latvia and Poland.
Now, hundreds of would-be migrants are returning home having failed to cross the heavily guarded frontier. Some described the harsh conditions of living in the forest in winter, often with young children, and of beatings by border guards.
Last week, around 430 would-be migrants, mostly Kurds, touched down in Erbil on a flight from Minsk. The plane took off again for Baghdad where it deposited other returnees.
In Manama, the Iraqi foreign minister met with Berger on the sidelines of the Manama Dialogue in Bahrain on Sunday, according to Iraqi media.
The two ministers stressed the need to “move quickly to stop the networks smuggling people,” the Iraqi foreign ministry said in a statement, according to state news agency INA.
Hussein said during the meeting that the federal government was ready to provide support and assistance to the Iraqi immigrants and return them to Iraq, the statement read.
Hundreds of people from Iraq and the Kurdistan Region are stranded on the border between Belarus and Poland.
About 3,000 Kurds have left the region in the past three months, of whom 1,600 have gone to Belarus on tourist visas, according to the Kurdistan Refugee Association.
Regular air links between Baghdad and Minsk have been suspended since August, while Belarusian diplomatic missions in Baghdad and Erbil, have been closed for more than a week.
Last week, Turkey and UAE banned citizens of Iraq, Syria and Yemen from flying from its airports to Belarus.
At least eight people have died at the border in recent months, including a 19-year-old Syrian man who drowned in a river trying to cross to the EU, according to Reuters.
