Poland says Belarus is still bringing immigrants to its borders | Refugee Stories

Polish border officials said Belarusian troops had brought about 100 refugees and refugees to its border on Saturday night.

Poland has accused Belarus of continuing to smuggle migrants across the border despite clearing camps near the border earlier this week, as the prime minister embarks on a tour of the Baltic states to seek help.

The European Union (EU) has accused Belarus’ President Alexander Lukashenko of deliberately trying to overwhelm refugees and refugees in retaliation for the country’s sanctions and the EU’s refusal to accept Lukashenko’s candidacy after last year’s presidential election.

Minsk, who has denied any wrongdoing, removed the refugee camp near the border on Thursday and began evacuating more people from Iraq in the wake of the war.

However Poland says Minsk continues to board hundreds of refugee and refugee vehicles at the border, where about 10 are believed to have died in the winter.

“On Saturday … a group of 100 brutal tourists, who were brought to the border by Belarus troops, tried to force their way into Poland. (Polish) operations prevented them from crossing,” the Polish Border Guard said on Twitter on Sunday.

The border official said the incident took place just before midnight on Saturday near the Polish village of Czeremcha. Belarusian security forces chased the group to the border with a car and gave them timber to pass through the barbed wire, a spokesman for the Polish border guard, adding that the guards had pelted them with stones and blinded them with laser beams.

According to the spokesman, there have been 208 attempts by refugees and refugees to enter Poland from Belarus on Saturday – fewer than Friday but less than 501 attempts recorded Wednesday.

Since Poland does not allow journalists to enter the region, data cannot be verified individually.

Neighbor Lithuania said 44 migrants were barred from entering Saturday, the lowest one week.

Twelve people from Iraq, speaking to the Lithuanian portal DELFI on the border with Belarus on Saturday, said they had been brought there in military vehicles by Belarusian officials, who had ignored their demands to return to Iraq.

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki traveled to Estonia on Sunday morning to discuss the situation with his counterpart Kaja Kallas. He will travel to Lithuania and Latvia later in the afternoon.

“Today, on the eastern border of Poland, we are fighting a new kind of war, a war in which refugees are armed, in which disinformation is a weapon, a mixed war,” Morawiecki said, adding additional economic sanctions against Minsk. .

A survey conducted by SW Research published by Rzeczpospolita daily on Sunday showed 55.1 per cent of Polish people worried that border problems could become a permanent conflict.

However, hundreds took part in protests in Warsaw and near the Belarus border on Saturday to demand the help of refugees and internally displaced persons.