Migrants at Poland’s border: calm after the near storm

On the border between Belarus and Poland, hundreds of migrants spent the night in a tent camp right next to the border fence. The opposition in Warsaw is calling for international organizations to be allowed to go to the border.

After the disturbing images on Monday, the Polish authorities reported a quiet night. The local police spoke of a stone’s throw in the direction of a police vehicle at the border, and it was also quiet.

Pictures of the border guards showed how a larger group of migrants had set up a camp and lit campfires on the other side of the border fence, not far from a now closed border crossing.

Katarzyna Zdanowicz, the spokeswoman for the border guards in the Polish outskirts of Podlasie, explained: “Last night was relatively quiet. The people gathered there, according to our estimates up to 800, put up tents and organized their camps, of course everything under the supervision of Belarusian services. The people did not behave aggressively and we spread throughout the night in different languages ​​that crossing the border at this point is absolutely forbidden and that people will be returned to Belarus. “

“Migrants as a human shield”

In Warsaw the previous evening, Sejm chairwoman Elzbieta Witek spoke about the situation in a speech in front of the Polish and an EU flag – which was not always visible in the end. The Belarusian ruler Alexander Lukashenko used migrants in a cynical way as a human shield, she said.

And like other representatives of the PiS party up to the Prime Minister these days, she particularly emphasized that it was not just a question of a Polish border. “The attack on the Polish border is an attack on the EU and a NATO member.

Meanwhile, the political opposition in Poland is increasingly demanding that the conflict be internationalized. So far, Poland has neither wanted to resort to the help of the EU border protection agency Frontex nor to allow international aid organizations to go to the border. Opposition leader Donald Tusk even called for article four of the NATO treaty to be activated, the first stage of the so-called alliance case.

Call for help to NATO not excluded

The spokesman for the Polish Intelligence Coordinator, Stanislaw Zaryn, said: “We are constantly working on an expert level with both Frontex and NATO. Both have expressed their support for our action on the border. At the moment, our government has decided that The Polish border is mainly protected by Polish forces and soldiers. We know that the crisis will last a long time and we do not rule out that help from the Allies will still be necessary. But at the moment our people are on duty. “

At dawn, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki visited border guards in the restricted area. To this end, the authorities distributed effective pictures under dramatic cloud formations from a region into which normal press photographers have not been allowed for months and in which photos from the border, for example, are strictly forbidden.

Dispute over relief supplies

Morawiecki thanked the border guards for their “professional work” with “full respect for human dignity”. He complained that Polish aid convoys organized by the country were not allowed to cross the border into Belarus at the regular crossings. On an earlier occasion, when asked why these relief supplies were not driven directly to the border and thrown over the border fence, officials said that such a practice would be illegal. The migrants are located on Belarusian territory and have to be cared for accordingly from there.