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Comment on Norway is mulling building a fence on its border with Russia, following Finland's example
red@sopuli.xyz 1 month agoThe point of mentioning the road crossing points were that those places are reinforced, and yeah, it’s silliness to attempt it there, leaving no possible places to take a truck over the border due difficulty terrain - we’re talking about migrants here, not soldiers.
They aren’t using vehicles, the russians provided migrants bicycles to get to the crossing points when they had the “flood our border with immigrants” operation active some months ago.
That leaves us with one large issue to cover: people traversing the foresty areas by foor, attempting to slip in undetected. That’s where the fence comes in - they can obviously get over it, but it’s a slowing measure. The fence also contains alarm systems and surveillance, so that our border patrol can then pinpoint where they are needed ASAP.
The border patrol people themselves wanted this, and it’s been working well.
sonori@beehaw.org 1 month ago
red@sopuli.xyz 1 month ago
I thought you just said the issue the government needed to solve was random people wandering across the border without realizing it.
Sorry, that was badly worder. What I meant was that migrants were able walk over the border from wherever, whenever. It wasn’t a huge issue historically, we’re talking about a few dozen people a year maybe, because the border area is so rural, so not many asylum seekers dared to trek there. To do so, would have required ample provisions and good clothing. Surveilled fences solved that issue.
Things however changed early this year:
1. We noticed a new phenomen, asylum seeker numbers at border crossings suddenly skyrocketed. Soon enough reporters and were noticing military transports bringing people from other parts of Russia to towns closer to our borders. Some immigrants were also pushed towards crossing the border illegally, at the southern area.
2. It was confirmed that Russia was providing transportation to scores of Somalian and Syrian migrants, pushing them to seek asylum from Finland, in an effort to destabilize us, and cause issues at the border.
3. Many of those asylum seekers went into hiding after being granted entry, something normal asylum seekers seldom do, as we have good social benefits systems in place that help asylum seekers a fair chance to restart their lives. The fear was that those disappeared people were Russian agents, and indeed random ifrastructure sabotaging has increased radically following the project by Russia. The worries we had turned out to be correct.
4. These migrants, in interviews, stated that they weren’t actively trying to seek asylum in Finland - Russia had pushed them to the border. They were loaded in trucks from south and east Russia, then taken closer to Finnish borders. It’s been reported that Russia even providing them with bicycles to make the final stretch.
Enter today: A few new laws and improved fences are in place now. Both plug the loopholes used by Russia. We have now laws in place to stop the phenomenon, legally, at the border, and we also have more time to respond and catch the ones who attempt an illegal border crossings.
And now, how this all ties into the news article in this thread: After all the changes we made, the next loophole they started to utilize was pushing people to Norway first, and from there on forwards. Norway is now waking up to the same reality that affected us earlier this year, and thus are starting on the same path.
It’s not all in attempt to just cause issues with Finland, getting into the en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Area easily and then having easy time to get deeper into EU is one of the things their saboteurs are utilizing.
sonori@beehaw.org 1 month ago
This all seems like even more reason to be channeling resources into the security needed to stop well equipped Russian saboteurs, as well as systems to better find people who disappeared or traveled to foreign countries after they were welcomed across the border, instead of a fence that does neither.
red@sopuli.xyz 1 month ago
The fence has been effective ever since it was put up, not sure what you are on about.
sonori@beehaw.org 1 month ago
I thought you just said the issue the government needed to solve was random people wandering across the border without realizing it. People crossing or being trafficked across Russia in an attempt to exercise their right as a human being under article 14 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, an agreement specifically drafted with the goal of facilitating large movements of persecuted people in the wake of nations turning away people fleeing the Holocaust, well those people are trying to find and be collected by the border agents, so why would a fence change anything about the number of them trying to get out of a dangerous foreign nation?
I mean it’s not like Norway would be trying to discourage them from holding it to the obligations the nation signed and agreed to that require it to thoughtfully and thoughly analyze each of their claims in court, now would it? I mean if they don’t have even proper shoes, Norway is of course going to spare no expense in welcoming as many of them as show up as quickly as possible, right?
It apparently has all this extra money to spend on a changing a border system that is currently working very well in your own words.
Also, you realize we are talking about a press release about the Norwegian government considering future fencing of more of the Russian-Norwegian border, and not the system as it exists currently, right?
Kusimulkku@lemm.ee 1 month ago
And why exactly are these people not trying to get that asylum in Russia since they’re already traveling through the whole North-South length of it or in any countries in-between their country of origin and Russia? For people in acute need of asylum it does seem suspect that they’re making a long and costly trip through whole of Europe and large parts of Middle East and North Africa, though several countries where they could apply for that asylum, only to seek asylum in Norway-Russia border.
It doesn’t help that Russia and Belarus have used migrants as a tool of their influence operations and been allowing traffickers to operate and even helping them out.
sonori@beehaw.org 1 month ago
Um, so let’s think about this. Why are people fleeing the Russian military and its operations to secure the power of its chosen allies in Syria not rushing to seek asylum in the country that blew up their homes in the first place? I mean Russia is obviously such a great nation to live in, with its very high standards of living and no possibility of being forced to either join the Russian military or being handed over to the very regime you are claiming asylum from.
I also didn’t realize that Türkiye and Russia, the two nations between Syra and Norway, represented ‘the whole of Europe and large parts of the Middle East and North Africa’.
I guess the one poor country already hosting 3.2million refugees is handling it very well, as there have been absolutely no race riots, violence, or mass deportations back to Syria, and we should expect every single refugee to stay there instead of attempting to make a claim in any other nation.
I also missed that line in the UN declaration of human rights that says you can ignore applying these rights to people if the Russians are also being dicks to them. /s
Kusimulkku@lemm.ee 1 month ago
It’s not about shopping for a great country to live in, that’d be just migration. It is about finding asylum from persecution etc. If they’re willing to travel very far to find one with the best quality of life until they make their asylum request, then that does sound very suspects.
And I’m not sure if you are being purposefully obtuse about the system but also of the fact that there’s quite a few other countries closer to Syria than Norway and plenty of opportunities to apply for asylum. And of the fact that it’s not just Syrians who are doing the asylum requests but people from a lot further away.
When people paying hefty sums to traffickers and organizing trips through several countries to the far North instead of anywhere closer and aren’t willing to settle for anything other than Norway for example, it does put into question their motivation. Whether it’s acute need of protection, war, famine such a thing or just seeking for a better life.