Questionable study: Latvia is worse than ISIS

A dubious study has been circulated in the information space about alleged atrocities committed by Latvian state border guards and members of the National Armed Forces against Iraqi migrants who, over a long period of time, attempted to enter the European Union by illegally crossing the Belarusian-Latvian green border. It says they've been tortured with electroshock, left freezing in minus 20 degrees, drowned in a bucket of dirty water.

These seem more like scenes from a Hollywood blockbuster than the reality of the situation that prevailed for several months at the Latvian border. Neatkarīgā can also say this from personal experience, because on Christmas Day I had the opportunity to take part in the protection of the Latvian border for two days, gaining a real insight into the importance of the work of border guards, the fragility of the border and the criminals trying to break into our country. The media was not allowed in the migrant conflict zone, but an exception was made for serving in the National Guard. Since the declaration of the state of emergency, the army has also assisted border guards in border regions. We reported more in "Exclusive from the eastern border: it's worse than it looks."

A humane attitude towards criminals

The overall impression at the border was rather sad. A fragmented temporary fence made of weak coils of barbed wire, a lousy infrastructure set up for patrolling, and migrant pressure almost the entire length of the border. There was no unjustified violence against migrants, let alone torture. Following protocol, detainees in the border area were allowed to sleep overnight in a heated tent, offered water, facilities, even the opportunity to charge their phones. And these migrants were not some kind of poor beggars. Mostly they were men in their prime, moving around in units organized according to military principles, with clearly defined roles and functions. But one fact went unmentioned in the publication at the time. On this particular shift, the intercepted migrants offered to sell information about how they had been tortured by Belarusian border guards. Of course, nobody bought the information about "Belarusian atrocities", and the next morning the perpetrators were taken back to where they came from - Belarus. As the officially approved tactic of repelling migrants would have it.

The role of torturers for Latvian guards

With the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the flow of illegals through Belarus to the Latvian border has dried up. It is now clear that the artificially created migration crisis was a Russian war overture aimed at creating a hostile attitude in Europe towards the refugees of the impending war in Ukraine. It was unsuccessful because European society knows how to distinguish between genuine war refugees and fake ones. However, the manipulation surrounding this hybrid operation continues, and now its participants, or people claiming to be such, have testified in a seemingly respectable study about the savage violence and torture they experienced on the Belarusian-Latvian border. Only the role of torturers is assigned to Latvian border guards and soldiers.

The title of the study is "Trapped in a lawless zone: humanitarian crisis at the Latvia-Belarus border."

The author of the study is Aleksandra Jolkina. The website says that she holds a PhD from the Queen Mary University of London. However, it does not say that she is a former Latvian journalist and once gained wider notoriety for attempting to seduce a government minister as a journalistic experiment. She has now turned from studying virtue to studying the European Union's freedoms of movement, migration and asylum law.

The case of Ahmed's torture

As part of her research, Dr Jolkina remotely interviewed around thirty Iraqis and Kurds who were detained on humanitarian grounds after one of their attempts to enter Latvia, placed in a detention center for foreigners in Daugavpils and later deported. And now they are telling of the savage violence they allegedly experienced at the Latvian border. Here is the testimony of some Ahmed, highlighted by the researcher Jolkina herself:

"They used electroshock on my entire body, they hit me in my tongue and blood started to come out of my mouth. They also hit me in the back of my neck and my private parts. I lost conscience and fell on the ground. A few seconds later I regained conscience and three commandos started beating me. I was lying on the ground, one was sitting on me and the other ones were beating me with feet and hands. I was yelling, I did not know what to do, that was crazy. One of the soldiers came again, held me and dunked my head into a bucket of water three times. I thought he was going to kill me. After that they took us to the border. They dropped me off and ordered to go to Belarus."

Worse than ISIS

So what does researcher Jolkina conclude from this and other scenes of violence in her study? That the attitude of the Latvian authorities towards asylum seekers from the Middle East crossing the Latvian border from Belarus contrasts sharply with the recent decision of the Latvian government to support at least 23,000 people arriving from war-affected Ukraine. The researcher suspects that the decision last summer to declare a state of emergency at the border was based on racist prejudices.

It is worth recalling here that the Iraqi migrants are mainly men in their prime, that they tried to enter Latvia from a country where there is no war, that they arrived in Belarus on tourist visas, and that they crossed Latvia's green border in search of a better life in the rich Western Europe. Ukrainian refugees, on the other hand, are mostly women, children, and the elderly. They are here to truly survive the war.

As for the Iraqi allegations of torture and violence, there is a very good chance that they are lies. Also this quote from the study:

"I just want to say that I will never forget what Latvia did to us. Latvian commandos treated us worse than Daesh."

If the criminals were ready to trade compromising information about the Belarusian border guards, why not trade the same false information about the other side in the conflict. According to the procedure on the study's website, Neatkarīgā submitted the following questions to Dr. Jolkina:

1) Did you pay them?

2) Who organized the interviews and selected the speakers?

3) How do you assess whether the interviewees are lying to you?

We are waiting for the answers.

A coincidence too convenient for the Kremlin

Dr Jolkina's study has not gone unnoticed by the Ministry of Interior, which has the main responsibility for tackling the migration crisis. Here's what Minister Marija Golubeva has to say:

"I asked the State Border Guard to evaluate what was written in this study when it was published.

The Border Guard did not find any confirmation of the facts presented here.

I would also like to point out that this treatment of people would not be tolerated. This is NOT government policy."

The Ministry of Defense also categorically rejects the accusations: "The use of force against migrants by the NAF is not possible because the State Border Guard performs the contact function with migrants, while NAF soldiers and National Guards perform the support function."

It is possible that such a study or a compilation of slander would not have been noticed in the Latvian public sphere if it had not just been promoted on social networks by Jolkina's former colleague Inga Spriņģe:

"If this practice has occurred, it should be stopped and the perpetrators should be punished. If this testimony is a lie, it is important to say that too." The clarification from the Ministries of Interior and Defense shows that the study contains false evidence. Fabrications that the researcher is uncritically spreading. And it is just as important to mention the circumstances in which the study was made public. At a time when Russia has invaded Ukraine, is threatening Latvia and accusing it of supporting Nazism, a study on racism in Latvian force structures seems a very suspicious coincidence.

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