Latvia calls watchdog’s migrant mistreatment claims ‘absurd’

The human rights watchdog said in a report released on October 13 that Latvian authorities have violently pushed back refugees and migrants from the country’s borders with Belarus.

Latvia on October 13 rejected as “absurd" claims by Amnesty International that it is violently mistreating migrants attempting to enter the European Union member country through Belarus.

The human rights watchdog said in a report released on Thursday that Latvian authorities have violently pushed back refugees and migrants — mostly from Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East — from the country’s borders with Belarus and of “subjecting many to grave human rights violations, including secret detention and even torture.”

In emailed comments to the Associated Press, Latvia’s Ministry of Interior said that “not a single case has been identified" of Latvian authorities “having used physical force or applied special means” and that no complaints of such behaviour have been recorded.

“We do not support the efforts of Amnesty International to equate the malicious instrumentalisation of migration and intentional threat to the EU’s external border by Belarus, on the one hand, with genuine asylum seekers and persons in a vulnerable situation, on the other hand,” the Ministry said.

A key allegation in the report is that Latvia uses rules stipulated under a declared state of emergency to suspend migrants’ rights to seek asylum in border areas, allowing “Latvian authorities to forcibly and summarily return people to Belarus.”

The report said “dozens of refugees and migrants have been arbitrarily held in tents at the border in unsanitary conditions" and that only a small percentage of people were allowed into Latvia. The “vast majority" of migrants have been placed in detention centres and offered “limited or no access to asylum processes, legal assistance or independent oversight."

The Latvian Interior Ministry said once the state of emergency was declared in August, authorities had announced that migrants' asylum applications would be assessed individually and entry would be permitted once “humanitarian grounds is established."

“No country is under an obligation to allow every foreign national who desires to do so, to enter its territory, and all the more, those who are making deliberate attempts to cross the national border illegally,” the Latvian Interior Ministry said.

In the past few years, Latvia and neighbouring Lithuania and Poland have seen a surge in the number of migrants trying to enter their countries from Belarus.

Lithuania last year accused Belarusian police officers of illegally entering its territory to push a group of migrants over the border. The EU has earlier condemned Belarus for what it said was an attempt by the country to “instrumentalise human beings for political purposes”.