At the Polish border, people die while fleeing – from exhaustion, cold, hunger, thirst. Anyone struggling through the swampy primeval forests of Belarus to Poland has been taken in by dictator Alexander Lukashenko’s false promise that a comparatively safe route to the EU leads via Minsk – which is what people from Iraq, Yemen, Syria or Afghanistan and many African countries are hoping for to be able to lead a better life in Europe. Instead, they often expect the brutality of Polish border guards.
This tragedy is not solely at the expense of the national-populist Polish PiS government. With its talk of a “hybrid attack” by the Belarusian dictator, the EU gave the right-wing government in Warsaw a welcome pretext for cracking down on refugees from the Middle East and Africa. The border guards treat the women and men, children and the elderly like attackers and enemies of the state who have to be brutally repelled – and illegally push many of them back to the Belarusian side.
It’s a few dozen a day compared to the hundreds of thousands at the Ukrainian border. The contrast couldn’t be more stark. The Polish government makes a clear distinction between friend and foe. Civil society, on the other hand, helps on both borders, both local residents and aid organizations. On the border with Ukraine this is welcome in the sense of Poland’s new bright image in the world as an exemplary helper. At the border to Belarus, on the other hand, there can be a fine for aiding and abetting illegal border crossings or even for people smuggling.
The European Union could easily have prevented this drama. Now she has to ensure fairness in refugee aid
The EU has allowed the impression that it can be shaken by a few tens of thousands of refugees. As if she didn’t have experience with much larger numbers. Taking care of the people without making a fuss and checking their asylum applications would have shown the dictator in Minsk from the start that his strategy was not working. Eventually, the EU also managed to close the escape route. Nevertheless, the Polish government can continue to present itself as a protector against aggression from the East. The almost 200-kilometer-long steel wall currently under construction, the PiS boasts, protects all of Europe and secures NATO’s eastern flank. It’s not clear if she’s thinking of Belarusian tanks or a few desperate families fleeing.
No, Poland’s right-wing government hasn’t suddenly mutated into a troupe of liberal humanitarians just because it shows so much solidarity with Ukraine. As is so often the case, human rights organizations in Poland are not only angry with their own government, but also disappointed with the EU. Because it says nothing about the deterrent wall that is being built in the jungle protected by UNESCO and the EU. The EU offered Poland and Lithuania administrative assistance in December. Lithuania took action, Poland did not. well
Now the Polish government wants help in caring for Ukrainian war refugees. A good time for all EU partners to remember that everyone in need has the same moral duty to help. The right to ask for international protection and to wait for a decision under decent conditions is the very minimum.