Political tensions between Poland and Belarus escalated on Monday after hundreds of people , mostly Iraqi Kurds , they try to access the territory of the first country generating several clashes with security forces deployed on the border .
Warsaw accuses Minsk of organizing this sudden surge in the arrival of immigrants and refugees since last August has gone from being a matter anecdotal , with minimal figures in 2020 , thousands of cases. The Polish authorities claim that the neighboring government has unleashed what they call "hybrid war " which used as pawns to refugees and immigrants.
The Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Poland, Piotr Wawrzyk, accused Minsk in the morning of trying to "generate a serious incident, preferably where they occur and surround ammunition (real). They are preparing a provocation, an attempt to cross into mass from border".
At the same time the government led Mateusz Moraviecki convened an emergency meeting with the heads of Defense and Interior to analyze what was happening in that region.
The rise of the dispute, Minsk linked to the sanctions imposed on the regime controlled by Alexander Lukashenko , has led to an increase of Polish military forces in the border area already reach 12,000 troops , backed by tanks .
The leader of the Belarus opposition in exile , Sviatlana Tsikhanaouskaya , demanded a sign of the European Union in a tweet in which he said that the authoritarian regime controlling their country "seeks an escalation in the border crisis response. Immigrants are being pushed to the border by armed men ( Belarusians uniform ) . "
Although the emergence of a new migration route at the borders of the European Union dates back to August, the dynamics sponsored by Minsk has not only kept all these months but the number of people trying to reach Poland and Lithuania has increased exponentially in recent weeks .
Last weekends Belarusian journalists began to warn of an unusual presence in Minsk of numerous groups of foreigners from Middle Eastern countries .
Monday those same Iraqi informers and began to spread images of their arrival at the border post of Kuznica -sito 224 km to the east of Warsaw , where they became almost a thousand. Belarus Border Guard confirmed the mobilization of immigrants but accused Poland to adopt an " inhuman attitude " .
" Indifference and inhumane treatment of the Polish authorities pushed the refugees to this act of desperation ," the state agency on a text published on social networks .
The images that retransmitted the immigrants during the day allowed to see as they marched towards Customs until the Belarusian military -conscious of what was happening - they forced them to change their route by directing them towards the wire that has placed Poland in the middle of the grove to mark his territory. There, some members of this concentration tried to dismantle those obstacle with tree branches, while the security forces replicated with gas sprays. The Polish police also resorted to the use of helicopters to try to disperse that group of people.
At noon , the recording allowed to see rows of armed military policemen behind large shields against immigrants , who had managed to knock down the line of concertina wire .
Shortly thereafter, the Ministry of Interior issued a statement reporting that he had " prevented " the crossing and that " the situation is under control" .
A representative of the Border Police of Poland added that "there are still large groups (of immigrants) on the border. We are doing everything possible so that they can not cross the border. Not only are they moving around Kuznica but also by the Polowce area (another step located in the southeast of the country). Most are young but there are also women and children. "
Polish NGOs and organizations such as Amnesty International have warned of military action and Polish police have returned to Belarus to a significant number of immigrants in contravention of the Geneva Convention . However , the local parliament dominated by the far-right ideology executive in October approved a new law that gave legal letter to these " hot returns " .
At the least 10 migrants have died trapped in the icy border region , full of swamps and woods , outside this geostrategic dispute involving the EU, NATO and Russia , the mainstay of Belarus .
According to Warsaw, the troops and security forces of Belarus have starred in several altercations with the military who custody the border. The "most serious", in the words of Stanislaw Zaryn, a Polish spokesman, occurred only a few days ago when three uniformed Belarusians went into Poland armed with machine guns.
Zaryn said the trio was intercepted by a Polish patrol and then the Belarusians " reloaded their weapons " , but then decided to return to his country. "It was the most serious incident so far. There was an error," he added .
Date Of Update: 08 November 2021, 10:19
