[LINK] "A divided village highlights a divided Europe"

[rfmcdonald]

Yuras Karmanau's Associated Press article "A divided village highlights a divided Europe", describing how the once-permeable frontier between the Lithuanian and Byelorussian SSRs has become nearly impermeable, thanks to Lithuanian membership in the European Union and Lukashenko's authoritarianism.

When Stanislava Subach wants to lay flowers on her husband's grave, she puts them in a plastic shopping bag and adds some stones for weight.

The package is then tossed over a metal fence and into what is now another country, to be picked up by former neighbors and placed on the grave.

The border between Belarus and Lithuania, two countries that were part of the Soviet Union, was once little more than a line on a map.

Now a fence runs along the border, representing a new version of the Iron Curtain that separated Eastern and Western Europe until communism collapsed. The autocratic regime of Belarus portrays this heavily policed border as the last line of defense against an encroaching West, represented by Lithuania, now a member of the European Union and NATO.

Here the fence cuts right through the village, separating Pyatskuny on the Belarus side from its Lithuanian half, Norviliskes. Villagers are cut off from the neighbors, the parish church and the cemetery, just a few steps but a whole world away.

People living across the fence can travel visa-free throughout Europe and work there. Those who stay in Norviliskes are paid by the EU to farm their land, and have money to fix up their homes and buy new clothes.

Those on the Belarusian side have little choice but to work on the local collective farm, and they depend on their gardens for food.

Belarus' President Alexander Lukashenko, who permits no real economic or political reform, uses the fortified border much as the Soviet bloc once did: as a way to keep people in as much as keep them out.

The Lithuanian border police operate as any in Europe: guarding the frontier with patrol cars and video cameras, chiefly to catch smugglers and illegal immigrants. But on the Belarus side, armed guards patrol with dogs and are authorized to shoot, though they never have. Anyone trying to climb over the fence can be imprisoned for up to two years.

Villagers cannot even walk to the fence to talk to neighbors or pass parcels. Just leaving a footprint in the 10-foot-wide raked dirt track along the fence can mean a fine or 10 days in jail.

"Our hearts were left on the other side of the fence," said Subach, 67, as she sat on the border watching a service through the open door of the Catholic church and joining in the prayers. She has not visited her husband's grave for more than two years, nor can she attend Mass in her church on Easter and Christmas.

To travel there, she would have to journey 90 miles to the nearest Lithuanian consulate, wait in line for several days, pay about $90 for a visa (almost her entire monthly pension), travel 60 miles north to a border checkpoint and another 60 miles south before finally arriving in Norviliskes.

The situation is faintly reminiscent of the separation between the cities of Estonian Valga and Latvian Valka, only the ending isn't nearly as happy and rather ironic given not only Soviet-era unity but the unity of Belarus and Lithuania in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Regardless of this, Karmanau's article is worth reading, not least as an evocative description of the European Union's new eastern perimeter and its consequences.