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Stories Page |
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Lithuania's back door rhapsody |
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It is a hot summer's day in eastern Lithuania and a heat haze quivers over a scene of bucolic charm Two storks are nesting on the roof of a thatched farmstead and just a mile or so away a horse and cart disappear down a dirt track in a cloud of dust.
There is not so much as a fence in sight on Lithuania's border with Belarus - just a ditch and few posts to mark the boundary. Two Lithuania's border guards plough through knee-length grass. They are on patrol along a five-mile stretch of the border. A spotter high up in a watchtower helps direct them, but still it is arduous work. This is a favoured crossing point for illegal immigrants making the long and dangerous passage from Asia to Europe. A senior officer, Pyatras Shimkus, admits the problems, but says new equipment and better training are making a big difference. "We've now got thermal cameras supplied by the European Union," he told. "That helps us to detect intruders at night." A few years ago, Lithuania's border was as porous as a sieve. A tide of illegal immigrants flooded across its borders, but today it is no longer such a soft touch. |
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The European Union's Ambassador to Lithuania, Henrik Schmieglow, is impressed with the progress it has made. "If we compare the situation now with the one that existed two or three years ago, it has improved dramatically," he said. Afghan pop music fills the grounds of a detention centre for illegal immigrants on the outskirts of the Lithuanian capital Vilnius. The number of inmates is down on last year, but nobody really knows how many are slliping through undetected. A high percentage come from Asia. Lin Xi Ming from China is adamant about one thing - he doesn't want to go home. About the rest he's rather vague. He told us that his arrrest had been misunderstanding and that he had a business in Prague. It emerged later that he had been imprisoned for his part in smuggling people across the border.
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The traffic in human beings is big business and much of it is organised in Russia and Belarus... |
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