Norway has said it will send back refugees who had taken advantage of a legal loophole to cross its Arctic border with Russia on bicycles.



About 5,500 people, most of them Syrians, cycled through the Arctic Circle Storskog crossing in 2015 to take advantage of a loophole in border rules: while Russia does not allow people to cross on foot and Norway does not let in drivers carrying people without documents, bicycles are permitted at both ends.

Sylvi Listhaug, who was appointed Norway’s first immigration minister in December with promises to crack down on the refugee flow, said this week that all those who crossed at Storskog without a transit visa would be sent back to Russia, according to English-language Norwegian news site the Local.

The Norwegian national police directorate said it was trying to avoid sending the refugees back on bicycles, but it has ordered that bikes ditched after the crossing “be gathered up for use by the foreigners who will be returned to Russia”, a police official, Jan Erik Thomassen, told the broadcaster NRK. “I can understand that it feels a bit awkward and odd,” he said.

On Thursday Norwegian police confirmed that the refugees would not be forced to return across the border on two wheels, and could instead be taken by bus.

As hundreds of thousands of refugees fled to Europe last year by boat across the Mediterranean, a smaller number took the long way around, travelling to Norway, which is a member of the visa-free Schengen area, via the Russian Arctic. They typically obtained Russian visas in Damascus or Beirut – some even went so far as to enrol in a Russian university to get a student visa – then flew to Moscow and took a train to Murmansk. From there, it was about 130 miles from the Norwegian border, where they were placed in refugee camps.

Although Russian business owners have reportedly been charging several hundred US dollars for a bicycle and a ride to the border, the route is still far cheaper than being smuggled across the Mediterranean.

The two countries began bouncing refugees between them in November after Norway said it would send back asylum seekers with Russian residency permits, but Russia refused to take them.

Svetlana Gannushkina, an immigration activist, said Syrians sent to Russia would not be deported but were unlikely to receive legal status. Of the 12,000 Syrians now in Russia, according to official figures, 2,000 have been granted one-year temporary asylum and 2,000 another legal status. “They’ll illegally travel around Russia, as they did before. Many refugees here are in a suspended state with no status.” She said Russian authorities gave visas to Syrians, but they often did not provide them with legal status or assistance in integrating.

Refugees without legal status face being held in detention centres or fined. Although Russia previously deported some Syrians to Turkey, Turkey no longer accepts them, and there have only been isolated instances of Syrians being sent back to their homeland.



Gannushkina said Russia had awarded permanent asylum to only 790 people, of whom two were Syrian. “What is 790 people for Russia?” she said. “That’s one apartment building.”