WARSAW, POLAND: Polish human rights activists said that a group of some 30 migrants, including children seeking asylum, has been stuck at Poland’s border wall with Belarus for three days.
According to Voice of America, although the migrants were outside Poland’s border wall, activists from Grupa Granica said they were on Polish territory, and Belarus wasn’t allowing them to turn back.
Activist Marta Staniszewska said, “in Belarus, they’re unsafe.”
Staniszewska said, “The Belarusian services, as this group has told us, threaten them that if they return, they’ll be beaten or they’ll kill them.”
According to Staniszewska, the migrants said many of them were sick, with a girl having a toothache and the children having mosquito bites.
A representative of Poland’s ombudsman’s office visited and negotiated with the group but later told reporters that the decision to allow them into the country was the prerogative of the Polish Border Guards.
Maciej Grzeskowiak said, “If these persons are indeed within the jurisdiction of the (Polish) Border Guard and declare their willingness to apply for world protection, then …. such applications should be accepted.”
Last year, Poland put up almost 190 kilometres of the tall metal wall intended to pause thousands of migrants from Africa and Asia entering the country from Belarus.
The European Union (EU) has accused authoritarian Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko of aiding illegal border crossings in retaliation for EU sanctions. Lukashenko denies encouraging migration to Europe.
Poland’s strong politician, the head of Poland’s right-wing ruling party, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, said that building the wall was a great decision. He said it safe Poland and the EU against hostile moves by Russia and Belarus.
According to the Border Guard, Despite the wall, up to 150 migrants of many nationalities, often with Russian visas in their documents, try to cross illegally into Poland daily.
Occasionally, such groups threw sticks and stones behind the wall at the border guards but then moved away. It is impossible from Poland’s side to determine what happens to the groups.
