European Hospitality

Sponsored by Columbia Global Reports

In early July 2021, writes Caitlin L. Chandler today in the NYR Online, “the Lithuanian government declared a state of emergency due to a ‘mass influx’ of immigrants” who had come via neighboring Belarus, which had just loosened its visa policies. “A week later it sent guards into the forest that stretches along the border with Belarus, imposed six months of mandatory detention for all asylum seekers, and constructed detention camps” to imprison the people at its doors.

One of those detainees, taken later in July, was Sajjad Mohammedhasan, a twenty-four-year-old IT professional who had just fled Iraq for fear of persecution. He spent a year in Lithuanian detention, most of it at a repurposed prison, amassing evidence about the suffering and deprivation to which the authorities subjected him and his fellow asylum seekers. Now he lives in Germany, awaiting both the outcome of his asylum application there and the verdict in a case he filed against the Lithuanian government in the European Court of Human Rights. Over the course of a number of interviews with Chandler, he shared his story.

Below, alongside Chandler’s article, we have collected five essays from our archives about Europe and its treatment of migrants.