The Polish government aims to introduce a state of emergency on the border with Belarus to stem migrants crossing illegally, Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said Tuesday.
It’s the first such measure since the 1981 declaration of martial law under communist rule; past governments avoided declaring a state of emergency for natural disasters and even during the worst of the coronavirus pandemic.
The migrants, many of whom say they want to seek asylum in Poland, are part of a wider effort by Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko to fly people from the Middle East and send them across borders with Lithuania, Latvia and Poland as a way of exerting pressure on the EU.
“The situation on the border with Belarus is a crisis, it’s very tense, because Lukashenko’s regime is transporting people mainly from Iraq to the territory of Belarus and is then shoving these people on to the territory of Poland, Lithuania and Latvia to destabilize our countries,” Morawiecki said.
Warsaw registered more than 3,000 attempts at illegal crossings in August. In response, the government sent troops to back up border guards and is building a barbed-wire fence along the heavily forested frontier.
The highest profile issue is a group of 32 people stuck on the border in Usnarz Górny — with the Poles refusing to let them enter and Belarusians not letting them back into Belarus. Human rights activists in the area say they lack access to food, water and shelter, and say Polish authorities are not accepting asylum requests from the migrants.
The migrants have attracted huge media attention, as well as the presence of opposition politicians and human rights campaigners, 13 of whom were arrested after trying to tear down the fence. Poland has also come under pressure from the European Court of Human Rights to provide migrants with food, water and temporary shelter.
Ylva Johansson, the migration commissioner, said last week that the “area between the Poland and #Belarus borders is not a migration issue, but part of the aggression of Lukashenko toward Poland, Lithuania and Latvia with the aim to destabilize the E.U.”
If approved, the state of emergency would cover 183 towns lying within about 3 kilometers of the border and would last for 30 days. The detailed list of new measures hasn’t been disclosed, but Poland’s Interior Minister Mariusz Kamiński said they will have little impact on local inhabitants, while imposing restrictions on outsiders.
“No trips, no happenings and demonstrations will be able to be organized along this border zone,” he said, adding that the police, army and border guards have to have effective tools to bring order to the area.
“If we let this group into our country, in an illegal way, we will end up not with one Usnarz but with many,” Kamiński said, calling the effort to tear down the border fence “scandalous.”
Morawiecki said Lithuania and Latvia have brought in similar measures.
The government will ask President Andrzej Duda to introduce the state of emergency. The decision will later have to be approved by the parliament.
That effort is already coming under fire in the deeply divided country, with The Left opposition party saying it will call for an emergency session of parliament to reject the state of emergency.
Jan Grabiec, a spokesperson for Civic Platform, the largest opposition party, said the state of emergency was not aimed at halting migrants and “it will only stop the Polish media from showing the chaos and helplessness of the government.”
Source: Politico
