EU accuses Belarus of ‘gangster’ methods as migrants shiver at Polish border
President Alexander Lukashenko is accused of using “gangster-style” tactics in the months-long border stand-off.
NAREWKA — Hundreds of migrants huddled around forest campfires in freezing temperatures on Tuesday near the Belarus-Poland border where razor wire fences and Polish border guards blocked their entry into the European Union.
The EU vowed more sanctions against Belarus, accusing President Alexander Lukashenko of using “gangster-style” tactics in the months-long border stand-off in which at least seven migrants have died.
Poland and other EU member states accuse Belarus of encouraging the migrants – from the Middle East, Afghanistan and Africa – to illegally cross the frontier into the EU in revenge for sanctions slapped on Minsk over human rights abuses.
“The Belarusian regime is attacking the Polish border, the EU, in an unparalleled manner,” Polish President Andrzej Duda told a news conference in Warsaw.
“We currently have a camp of migrants who are blocked from the Belarusian side. There are about 1,000 people there, mostly young men. These are aggressive actions that we must repel, fulfilling our obligations as a member of the European Union.”
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Reuters reporters saw Polish border guards detain a group of Iraqi Kurdish migrants in a forest on the Polish side of the border on Tuesday afternoon. Medics put Red Cross blankets around some of the migrants. One elderly woman could not walk.
NGO Grupa Granica (Border Group) said there were 16 migrants in the group, nine of them children. It said the group had been pushed back and forth between Polish and Belarusian border guards four times since they reached the border on Oct. 24.
“I ask for asylum in Poland,” read a message scrawled in English on a piece of paper held up by a middle-aged man.
Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiekci, who earlier visited Polish troops stationed at the border, said the migrants were being used by Belarus as part of “a new type of war in which people are used as human shields.”
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Lukashenko’s government, which is backed by Russia, denies engineering the migrant crisis and blames Europe and the United States for the plight of the people stranded at the border.
It summoned Poland’s defence attache on Tuesday to protest what it said were unfounded allegations about the involvement of Belarusian military personnel in the crisis.
Lukashenko and Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed the situation by phone and expressed concern over the build-up of Polish troops at the border, the Belarusian state news agency Belta reported on Tuesday.
“To conduct a war with these unfortunate people on the border of Poland with Belarus and move forward columns of tanks – it’s clear this is either a training exercise or it’s blackmail,” Lukashenko said in televised comments.
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