Iraqi Kurd's death in Belarus underscores migrants' despair

Iraqi Kurd's death in Belarus underscores migrants' despair

SeattlePI.com

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BAGHDAD (AP) — When Gaylan Delir Ismael heard that other Iraqis were making their way to Europe via an easily obtained tourist visa from the country of Belarus, the 25-year-old from the Kurdistan region jumped at the chance. He packed a bag last month in the hope of reaching Germany for a new life and treatment for his chronic illnesses.

He never made it.

Gaylan's body, in a black coffin wrapped in plastic, was returned to Irbil's airport in northern Iraq on Sunday after he died in a dark and soggy forest near the Belarus-Poland border.

He is one of at least 11 people known to have died in the border crisis that European Union officials blame on the authoritarian regime of Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko, accusing him of using the migrants as pawns to retaliate for Western sanctions. Belarus denies this, blaming Europe for denying them safe passage.

Thousands of people, most of them from the Middle East, have attempted the journey since Lukashenko announced in May that he was loosening border controls against Western-bound migrants. That move followed EU sanctions for his harsh crackdown on internal dissent.

That has led in recent days to tense standoffs on the Poland-Belarus frontier. Polish police, troops and border guards are refusing entry to the migrants, leaving thousands of them huddling in forests on the Belarusian side amid freezing temperatures.

The circumstances of the confrontation at the border that led to Gaylan's death are unclear, but his father, Delir Ismael Mahmoud, blamed Poland, even though the large buildup of security forces there did not begin until days after his death.

“Unfortunately, the Polish police — instead of helping them — they started to deport them and put them on the other side of Poland’s border,” said Delir, a broken figure...

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