- cross-posted to:
- world@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- world@lemmy.world
Norway may put a fence along part or all of the 123-mile border it shares with Russia, a move inspired by a similar project in its Nordic neighbor Finland.
Archived version: https://archive.ph/1WMyN
Here’s something for you to think about when making these silly drive over the fence remarks:
The border area consists mostly of hard to traverse terrain with only half a dozen roads or so on Russias side iirc. It’s easy for us to see vehicles approaching, because the places where the could are far and few between.
The issue is just random people walking over. We have plenty of road networks to intercept on this side, as long as we know where border guards are needed.
Final note: there are only 9 border crossing stations altogether in a border spanning 1,343km.
Neglecting the silliness of assuming that we were talking about where the road crosses the border, or alternatively showing a map where the Russian road parallels the border for sections and where not a single part of the border is more than 10km from the Russian road while meaning it to show that no vehicle could even drive near to the border much reach it, surely what you said about the guards always knowing when someone is coming from kilometers away and being ready to meet them makes the case for a fence over the whole length worse, as it is evidently is and has not been needed for that purpose?
I guess it is nice though that the issue is just Norway considering spending a lot of money to help solve the issue of lost Russian tourists instead of trying to solve any security concerns.
How would the fence be worse?
The 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 foot, attempting to slip in undetected. That’s where the fence comes in - they can obviously get over it if they bring a ladder, but as they struggle to even have proper shoes, a ladder becomes a luxury item they cannot afford. In any case, the fence is 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.
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 either trying to find and be collected by the border agents or being trafficked and falsely terrified they’ll be sent back to horrific abuse if their discovered by the border patrol instead of welcomed in, 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, and as such undercutting human trafficking by showing how easy and risk free the alternative is, 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?
And that this boarder fencing functionality requires a nice, level, drivable trail to be cleared through the wilderness either side of it to be built and maintained, right?
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.
deleted by creator
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 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 https://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.
These are just new sort of cold war tactics by the Russkies, and it’s sad they are using people as fodder.