Putting up border fences against Schengen agreement: Activist
Press TV has conducted an interview with Katerina Belousova, activist and political commentator from Kotor, Montenegro, to ask for her take on the going refugee crisis in Europe.
What follows is a rough transcription of the interview.
Press TV: I am wondering how you feel about this talk of barriers going up? Certainly, the Austrian chancellor now seems to have put that to rest.
Belousova: First of all, it is very important that putting up fences violates the Schengen agreement that was signed by most of the EU countries by now, and many people are concerned about that. So this is the key issue within the European Union now because also there are many other states that would like close their borders now, not really to build fences, but at least to strengthen control on the borders.
Press TV: And obviously there has been a lot of talk about how all of this comes from because of racism and xenophobia. How do you feel about such arguments?
Belousova: Yes, it is true, especially true in Western Europe. I can tell you that for example in the Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania people are not used to people of different origin and now people propose to take refugees for example from Ukraine because their culture, their language are easier to understand for them.
And there were also comments of the...people who stay in the refugee centers in these Baltic States that they do not like the attitude of locals [inaudible]…; they use some bad words to describe those people...they also say that refugees will face a lot of problems with integration into the local society. For example, they have no idea how to teach kids in schools on what langue and these Western Europe countries have no experience on that in comparison to countries such as Sweden, for example, or Germany. So that is the key issue why they do not really want to upset refugees and the local population is against it as well.
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