Migrants in Lithuania's Rukla camp have staged a protest rally, demanding to be released from detention.
Several dozen migrants housed in the Refugee Reception Centre, central Lithuania, were seen assembling near the fence surrounding the camp. They were holding posters and chanting “Freedom”, according to LRT RADIO's Jūratė Anilionytė.
Read more: ‘All people are legal’ – activists protest Lithuania’s migration policy
Officers do not allow reporters to come near the camp, she said.
“We are not allowed to come close, Public Security Service officers and the police are on patrol,” Anilionytė reported from Rukla. “I can hear ‘freedom’, there's hissing and shouting, some of the tarp covering the fence has been torn down. I can see a lot of children, it looks like a protest rally.
Police cars have been seen patrolling near the camp as well as in the village of Rukla.
The Rukla camp houses around 400 asylum seekers.
Lithuania passed a law last August, allowing irregular migrants to be detained for up to six months. Around 4,200 migrants, many of them Iraqi citizens, have crossed into Lithuania from Belarus this year. Vilnius has accused the Minsk government of orchestrating migrant smuggling.
Read more: Migrants in Lithuania win right to appeal their detention
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