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HUNDREDS OF IRAQIS returned home today, on an Iraqi Airways flight from Belarus, where thousands of migrants have camped on the Polish border for weeks hoping to enter the EU.
It was the first repatriation flight of migrants since the Poland-Belarus border crisis began.
Many of them are fleeing war and poverty-wracked Middle Eastern countries.
A total of 431 people were aboard the Boeing 747, said a spokesman for the government of the autonomous region of Kurdistan where many of the repatriated Iraqis came from.
Iraq’s government has said the repatriation was voluntary.
The flight was to continue later in the evening to Baghdad but most of the passengers disembarked at Arbil.
Some hid their faces, so as not to be identified on local TV images as they stepped down from the plane.
The smile of one woman, however, was clear as she entered the terminal carrying an infant.
Over 400 migrants, the majority of which are ethnic Kurds, arrive on Thursday evening at Erbil International Airport from Minsk after having been stranded with thousands of others in freezing conditions along the border of Belarus.
— Kurdistan 24 English (@K24English) November 18, 2021
📸 Wladimir van Wilgenburg/Kurdistan 24 pic.twitter.com/Q9Me0sLd8C
Many of the children and adults wore thick winter coats and hoods, images from a regional Kurdish TV station showed.
Some carried their belongings in backpacks or plastic bags.
Inside the terminal, blue-suited workers administered Covid-19 tests.
The situation on the border created a stand-off between the European Union and US on one side and Belarus and its ally Russia on the other.
That left the migrants stuck in the middle and living in freezing temperatures.
At least 11 have lost their lives at the border.
Western countries have accused Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko’s government of engineering the crisis by encouraging migrants, many of them Iraqi Kurds, to come to Belarus and then taking them to the border.
The EU alleges this is revenge for sanctions imposed last year after a heavy crackdown on the opposition.
Lukashenko’s spokeswoman Natalya Eismont said today that there were about 7,000 migrants in the country, with about 2,000 in dire conditions on the border.
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Imagine, just imagine for one second after going through that ordeal, that you ended up back in a wartorn hellhole facing poverty, violence and god knows what else. Puts things into perspective, I’ll try and remember it next time I’m whining about not being able to go to a nightclub…
@Ruairi: I’ve read case studies about refugees where they’ve said that their overriding emotion was constant shame at the situations their kids were in. We’re hardwired to feel responsible for every bad thing that happens our kids even when it’s not our fault. This stuff is heart breaking when you think about it.
Pawns; nothing more.
That’s so sad. Makes me grateful for every single thing I have.
Europe will need to get it’s act together before history starts to repeat itself and get tough on its borders ,the easy Welfare lifestyle that’s portaited across the world is a big attraction to poorer curupt countries ,also if all these people need to be housed iand heated n colder wet climates it will defieat the global warming targets that are set , education on birth control and sustainable jobs need to be provided
@Gerard Heery:
Working with asylum seekers I have yet to meet one who came here for welfare or who doesn’t want to work
@Calvin James: need to mingle more with them like lve done for the last 30years
Sad reality is if they go to Turkey and get a boat to Greece or go to Libya and get the human traffickers and risk their lives to bring them to Italy, they will be be accepted as refugees and be allowed to settle in countries such as Poland, Lithuania, which are now fighting tootand nail to accept them, as well as Germany. Pawns in a big game of geopolitics. So tragic. Perhaps if people stopped meddling on the countries that most of the people were coming from, they would not have to run away from the carnage that they have had to endure for the sake of their liberation or freedom.
Anybody here willing to move to Libya now that Gaddafi is gone?
@George Vladisavljevic: The industrial military complex says you’re a crazy radical, probably on psychedelics.
@George Vladisavljevic: china has numerous ghost cities with thousands of empty appartment blocks as well ss thd worlds second largest economy. Why doesnt it over to help?
@Merlin Lancelot: Because China doesn’t want to be part of the solution. Do you think we should be more like China?
@Merlin Lancelot: What dies Chiba have to do with people running away from Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and several other countries? Why not ask Antartica to take them in? Perhaps get those that have brought the grief upon the people to take them in?
Is this the flight Kim K paid for- Great girl
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