As of: 09/30/2021 02:26 am
Amnesty International has accused Poland of illegally returning refugees. Polish border guards are said to have illegally brought refugees to Belarus. The people there are stuck under precarious conditions.
The human rights organization Amnesty International (AI) accuses Poland of illegally rejecting the Afghan refugees who had been stranded on the border with Belarus for weeks. The director of the AI Bureau for European Institutions, Eve Geddie, said the organization had evidence that “strongly suggests” that the group “was the victim of an unlawful forced return”. Amnesty relies on an evaluation of satellite images and photos.
The 32 refugees – four women, 27 men and a 15-year-old girl – are stuck in precarious conditions on the Belarusian side of the border. According to Amnesty, they have no access to food, clean water, shelter and medicine. Poland has sealed off the 418-kilometer border and declared a state of emergency, which is why journalists and aid organizations are formally prohibited from entering.
Return by Polish border guards?
According to their own statements, the people fled after the Taliban came to power in Afghanistan and crossed the Polish-Belarusian border in August. Polish border guards would then have brought them back to Belarus.
The Amnesty research is intended to support this claim: “Our analysis shows irrefutably that your position shifted from Poland to Belarus overnight on August 18,” said Geddie. Since the movement apparently took place when armed Polish border guards surrounded the makeshift camp of the refugees, Amnesty assumes a forced return.
Amnesty calls for an end to the emergency
The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg had already intervened in the case at the end of August and declared that a forced return to Belarus was not permitted. Amnesty has now asked Poland to withdraw the state of emergency and provide adequate care for the refugees and process their asylum applications.
Geddie also called on the EU for help: “People have asked for asylum in one EU country, and one EU member state is blatantly violating their rights,” she said. The EU must “act quickly and decisively to denounce these blatant violations of EU and international law”.
EU suspect Belarusian retaliation
Poland, Lithuania and Latvia have been complaining for a few months about the increased arrival of migrants, especially from the Middle East, on their borders with Belarus. The EU is assuming a retaliatory action by the Belarusian ruler Alexander Lukashenko for EU sanctions decisions. It is believed that the Belarusian authorities are bringing the migrants into the country and smuggling them to the borders with the eastern EU states.
EU Interior Commissioner Ylva Johansson wants to travel to Warsaw because of the refugee crisis in order to clarify several deaths at the border. According to Amnesty, five people have died in the border region since September 19, including from hypothermia.