Migrants lose legs to frostbite as winter complicates border crisis
Angel* was promised a European education. He ended up losing his leg.
Facing ethnic strife and grinding poverty in his native Sri Lanka, the 20-year-old was lured to Belarus by an advert for an international studies programme, offering a trip to Paris.
It turned out to be fake – a trap laid by Belarus’s government, he claims – and the promise of a free visa to Europe was actually climbing through a hole in the Lithuania border fence under the moonlight.
Dressed only in a summer jacket and cotton shoes, Angel and a few others wandered for days and nights in the wooded border area, buffeted by icy winds and sub-zero temperatures.
He eventually made it to Vilnius airport but was detained by Lithuanian border guards. His leg was riddled with gangrene, having succumbed to frostbite during the journey. It was amputated in hospital days later.
Angel is just one of the victims of Europe’s forgotten migration crisis.
At least three migrants have lost their legs to frostbite in recent months, with many more suffering debilitating injuries to their hands and feet that will be with them forever.
A lot of finger-pointing is going on over what’s behind the crisis.
Authorities in Lithuania – as well as the EU – place the blame squarely on the shoulders of Belarus, claiming it has weaponised migrants in retaliation for sanctions slapped on Minsk by the bloc in 2020.
“The Belarusian regime is the organiser of this ongoing irregular migration crisis,” Lithuania's interior ministry said in a statement sent to Euronews.
“Migrants are being used as a tool to create chaos, not only in our own country or in neighbouring countries, but throughout the European Union.”
The ministry claimed Belarus is using migration as a “form of hybrid aggression” against
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