EU Lawlessness Law at the EU-Belarusian Border: Torture and Dehumanisation Excused by ‘Instrumentalisation’

Abstract

This paper engages with the routine normalisation of mass violations of non-citizen’s rights at the EU–Belarusian border. The direct and indirect victimisation of the racialised ‘other’ on the Eastern border of the Union is a direct extension of the EU-sponsored war on its Member States’ former colonial nationals and other racialized passport-poor in the Mediterranean. Together, the two form one clear and coherent picture of fragrant mass rights abuse. This EU law approach has claimed more than 25,000 lives over the last eight years and left more than 100,000 innocent people captured and imprisoned, or enslaved and sold for ransom by the criminal proxies enlisted by the EU and its Member States. This dramatic situation has not arisen by chance. In this paper we show that an array of legal techniques is deployed by the European Union, specifically by FRONTEX, the European Commission and, to some extent, by the European Court of Justice – to make sure that the full extent of the denial of the right to life and other vital rights of non-citizens is never presented as a violation of EU law. We call these legal techniques EU lawlessness law. Focusing on the situation at the EU–Belarusian border allows us to zoom in on the bespoke lawlessness solutions crafted and deployed by the EU there. The gross violations of the law are rhetorically justified by the alleged instrumentalisation of migrants by the dictatorial Belarusian regime, which emerges as a de facto partner of the EU and its Member States in torturing numerous people in complete disregard of any of the legal guarantees that the Union professes to provide.

Keywords: EU law, Migration, Instrumentalisation, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Pushbacks, Non-refoulement, Asylum