MEDININKAI, Lithuania: EU Council President Charles Michel on Tuesday said member states suspect the Belarusian regime of having a hand in the influx of migrants entering Lithuania, adding that the bloc was “not intimidated.”
The Lithuanian border guard service said that over the past 24-hours alone they had detained 131 migrants, mostly from the Middle East and Africa.
That brings the total number of detected illegal crossings by migrants to more than 1,300 so far this year, compared to just 81 for all of 2020.
“There is the suspicion indeed that there is a role played by the Belarusian regime,” Michel said during a visit to the Lithuanian border town of Medininkai.
“We are not naive in Europe. We are also not intimidated,” he told reporters.
He spoke alongside Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte, who said that the “serious” migrant influx was “inspired by (Belarusian) government structures.”
Belarus strongman President Aleksander Lukashenko on Tuesday blamed Lithuanian authorities for triggering the migrant influx themselves after Vilnius announced on Monday that it would cut the asylum request process to 10 days.
“If you declare to the whole world that you will register those who make their routes through Belarus even faster, they will keep going. You are opening the door for these migrants even wider,” Lukashenko said, according to the local Belta news agency.
Minsk said last month it was suspending its participation in the Eastern Partnership, an initiative to boost ties between the EU and its ex-Soviet neighbors, after Brussels imposed new sanctions over the forced landing of a European flight.
The Belarusian foreign ministry added that the suspension of the agreement would have a “negative impact” on fighting illegal migration and organized crime as Belarus shares a border with EU members Poland and Lithuania.
As most of the migrants coming to Lithuania are from Iraq, Michel said he would speak with the Iraqi prime minister later this week in an effort to repatriate the individuals.
“We will also be in contact with other origin countries to see how... to cooperate more with these countries to send the signal that it is not possible to come here using illegal tools and illegal instruments,” he added.
Last month, the Lithuanian military set up several tents for the migrants to cope with the increased numbers. The interior ministry says it plans to expand the camp to accommodate “thousands” of migrants.
The number of guards from the EU border agency Frontex deployed on the border with Belarus is expected to increase to 30 later this month.
EU and NATO member Lithuania has become a hub for the Belarusian opposition, providing a safe haven for Svetlana Tikhanovskaya who fled there after claiming to have defeated Lukashenko in the disputed August 9, 2020 presidential election.
EU chief says ‘not intimidated’ by Belarus migrant pressure
https://arab.news/9cabb
EU chief says ‘not intimidated’ by Belarus migrant pressure
- Minsk said last month it was suspending its participation in the Eastern Partnership
Only 4% women on ballot as Bangladesh prepares for post-Hasina vote
- Women PMs have ruled Bangladesh for over half of its independent history
- For 2026 vote, only 20 out of 51 political parties nominated female candidates
DHAKA: As Bangladesh prepares for the first election since the ouster of its long-serving ex-prime minister Sheikh Hasina, only 4 percent of the registered candidates are women, as more than half of the political parties did not field female candidates.
The vote on Feb. 12 will bring in new leadership after an 18-month rule of the caretaker administration that took control following the student-led uprising that ended 15 years in power of Hasina’s Awami League party.
Nearly 128 million Bangladeshis will head to the polls, but while more than 62 million of them are women, the percentage of female candidates in the race is incomparably lower, despite last year’s consensus reached by political parties to have at least 5 percent women on their lists.
According to the Election Commission, among 1,981 candidates only 81 are women, in a country that in its 54 years of independence had for 32 years been led by women prime ministers — Hasina and her late rival Khaleda Zia.
According to Dr. Rasheda Rawnak Khan from the Department of Anthropology at Dhaka University, women’s political participation was neither reflected by the rule of Hasina nor Zia.
“Bangladesh has had women rulers, not women’s rule,” Khan told Arab News. “The structure of party politics in Bangladesh is deeply patriarchal.”
Only 20 out of 51 political parties nominated female candidates for the 2026 vote. Percentage-wise, the Bangladesh Socialist Party was leading with nine women, or 34 percent of its candidates.
The election’s main contender, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, whose former leader Zia in 1991 became the second woman prime minister of a predominantly Muslim nation — after Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto — was the party that last year put forward the 5 percent quota for women.
For the upcoming vote, however, it ended up nominating only 10 women, or 3.5 percent of its 288 candidates.
The second-largest party, Jamaat-e-Islami, has not nominated a single woman.
The 4 percent participation is lower than in the previous election in 2024, when it was slightly above 5 percent, but there was no decreasing trend. In 2019, the rate was 5.9 percent, and 4 percent in 2014.
“We have not seen any independent women’s political movement or institutional activities earlier, from where women could now participate in the election independently,” Khan said.
“Real political participation is different and difficult as well in this patriarchal society, where we need to establish internal party democracy, protection from political violence, ensure direct election, and cultural shifts around female leadership.”
While the 2024 student-led uprising featured a prominent presence of women activists, Election Commission data shows that this has not translated into their political participation, with very few women contesting the upcoming polls.
“In the student movement, women were recruited because they were useful, presentable for rallies and protests both on campus and in the field of political legitimacy. Women were kept at the forefront for exhibiting some sort of ‘inclusive’ images to the media and the people,” Khan said.
“To become a candidate in the general election, one needs to have a powerful mentor, money, muscle power, control over party people, activists, and locals. Within the male-dominated networks, it’s very difficult for women to get all these things.”
