Latvia calls watchdog’s migrant mistreatment claims “absurd”

By JARI TANNER
Associated Press

HELSINKI (AP) — Latvia has rejected as “absurd” claims by Amnesty International that it is violently mistreating migrants attempting to enter the European Union member country through Belarus. The human rights watchdog wrote in its report released Thursday that Latvian authorities have violently pushed back refugees and migrants, mostly from Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East, from the country’s borders with Belarus, “subjecting many to grave human rights violations, including secret detention and even torture.”