Immigration crisis in Poland like in 2015?

The immigration crisis on the Polish-Belarusian border is deteriorating. Poland is asking the EU for sanctions against Belarus but a solution is not immediately apparent.

It’s like a déjà vu. Images that in Poland were known only from other countries, are now for the first time being played on its own borders. Immigrants coming from Belarus. Opposite them are Polish police officers with helmets and protective shields on their chests.

The Polish authorities control the images that people see from the Polish side of what is happening on the border with Belarus. The three-kilometer-wide border strip has been inaccessible to journalists for weeks. No reporter has been able to form his own picture of the situation on the ground since September. The filming of border installations is prohibited. What remains are the official photos that no longer show peaceful families with children but a fierce crowd.

A special sitting of the Polish parliament was held on Tuesday afternoon due to the escalation of the crisis on the border with Belarus. Polish Defense Minister Marius Blastak reminded that the nationalist party PiS had already warned in 2015 about where uncontrolled immigration could lead. “The open door policy has led to terrorist attacks in Western Europe. I am very pleased that the EU has acknowledged that we were right,” he said. He described the current scenes of violence on the border with Belarus as “acts of aggression” that could be transferred from the border to Polish cities.

Categories for Belarus and from within

The government is preparing for challenges from Belarussian leader Lukashenko that could last for months or years. “On the eastern border we are not only dealing with the direct use of force against the sovereign Polish state, but also with a direction aimed at violating the Polish border and causing chaos,” said Polish Prime Minister Matthias Morawiecki.

Accusations of the Lukashenko regime are also being made from within. Former Belarusian diplomat and culture minister Pavel Latuska told Polish and international media that Belarus’ secret services were training former Afghan and Iraqi fighters to provoke violent clashes on the border with Poland. If this is true, then a new level of escalation will have been achieved. For this reason, Poland is seeking stricter sanctions against Belarus and the complete closure of European airspace to airlines carrying migrants there. A government spokesman on Wednesday did not rule out the possibility of Poland closing its border with Belarus for the first time.

Poland does not yet want help from the EU

A recent poll shows that the vast majority of Poles would like help from the EU, but the government has so far disagreed. “We have the best border guards in Europe,” Interior Minister Marios Kaminski said in late September. According to official information, an additional 13,000 Polish soldiers are currently deployed to reinforce the border guards and police. Humanitarian organizations such as Caritas or the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, on the other hand, are not allowed to approach the border.

“We do not intend to close the border at this time,” PiS parliamentary group leader Richard Terleski told reporters on Tuesday. “Sanctions including the complete closure of the border would also seriously affect Polish and European freight,” he said.

The conclusion after the special session of the Polish parliament is that there is currently no solution to the escalating migration crisis on the Belarus-Poland border and so the EU is heading towards a winter that can be fatal for many people. In Poland the cold is heavy. The situation really looks like a déjà vu of the 2015 immigration crisis.

Magdalena Gwoc Palocat

Edited by: Maria Rigoutsou

Source: Deutsche Welle