How do you get the European Union to recognize outside intruders as illegal aliens? Play the COVID game. Just ask the Lithuanians.
Lithuania’s main challenge stems from its easternmost location (along with Latvia and Estonia) on the EU border. That means dealing with Russia and Belarus. While Moscow has recently kept a rather low profile vis-à-vis Vilnius, Minsk has roared consistently at its EU neighbor.
There are several serious bones of contention between both nations. The most important are Lithuania’s fear of the Belarusian dilapidated nuclear facilities and Russian military installations implanted there.
On the other hand, the Lithuanians have enabled the nonviolent freedom fighters in a variety of ways. Most importantly, they support — together with Poland — free Belarusian media beaming its message out of the Republic of Lithuania.
Aleksandr “Daddy” Lukashenka hates that. Hence, he retaliates for the Lithuanian actions. One of the most effective ways is to emulate Turkey, Morocco, and Libya.
Whenever the North African and Middle Eastern states want concessions out of the EU, they turn on the spigot with illegal aliens and a wave upon wave of Third World migrants descends upon Europe.
The Minsk dictator has taken a leaf from their book and, in the past three months, allowed over 3,000 persons to cross illicitly into Lithuania. By tiny Lithuania’s reckoning it is a big deal.
Incidentally, this year alone Hungary has so far fended off 54,000 illegals crossing into the Magyar nation by immediately deporting them back to where they came from. That triggered howls of accusations of “intolerance” and “discrimination” from the usual suspects in the EU and the U.S.
However, when the Lithuanians complained about their intruders expedited from Belarus, Brussels actually neither called them “refugees” nor disputed their illegal status.
What gives? Of course, the Eurocrats loath democratically elected prime minister Viktor Orban of Hungary, who has consistently protected his country’s borders. Thus, they are quick to criticize the habitually defiant Magyars.
However, the Lithuanians have played by the EU rules. They did not deport the intruders. Instead, they have placed most of them into camps.
Next, Vilnius quietly built a frontier fence. Then, it proclaimed the border zone and the areas where the illegal visitors were placed a COVID danger zone and it imposed appropriately stringent pandemic restrictions.
Brussels liked it and made no usual warm-fuzzy noises toward the arrivals. Instead, it treated the incursion for what it was: Minsk’s brazen interference with the EU’s borders and social peace of Lithuania.
If the EU took the same approach as far as the rest of its member states were concerned, that would be a first step to address the migrant crisis. For example, one hears little, if anything, from Brussels in support of Copenhagen’s effort to return the refugees to their home countries, Syria in particular.
Instead, as the EU center benevolently looks on, Denmark braces itself for a bevy of lawsuits by progressive NGOs who endeavor to block the Danish — eminently reasonable and democratically sanctioned — move. No Lithuanian logic there.
Same goes for the COVID pandemic in Europe. Instead of checking out the Lithuanian and Hungarian ways, it continues to be managed in a hectic manner from the top and by most national government who are in tune with Brussels.
Controversies involve chiefly lockdowns, pandemic “apartheid,” and COVID passports. Here comes a handful of examples.
Latvia requires all teachers and health workers to undergo vaccination. Having inoculated its own citizens, Croatia proposes now to jab international tourists. Czechia has eased up on most restrictions, but one must have a COVID passport to go out dancing.
Without such passport one can’t ride a train or eat at a restaurant in Italy, Greece, and France. This prompted the burning of the French vaccination centers and mass demonstrations.
People also took to the streets in Germany to object to further COVID-driven restrictions. According to Irish ice hockey star Niall McEvoy, “Ireland is now, officially, a Medical apartheid/Fascist State in line with the wider global control grid.”
Everywhere the police enforces a strict separation, anti-pandemic regime as far as native Europeans are concerned. Some others can get away with flaunting the rules, for instance 450 illegal migrants on hunger strike in Belgium.
The police did not molest the strikers. Break the law and you will be awarded legal residency.
We can learn how to deal with all that from the Lithuanians, although it would be best to emulate the Hungarians.
Marek Jan Chodakiewicz is Professor of History at the Institute of World Politics, a graduate school of statecraft in Washington D.C.; expert on East-Central Europe's Three Seas region; author, among others, of "Intermarium: The Land Between The Baltic and Black Seas." Read Marek Jan Chodakiewicz's Reports — More Here.
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