On Poland's Border, A Continued Pushback Against Migrants 'Weaponized' By Belarus

Migrants are blocked from entering Poland by metal barriers erected along the border with Belarus in the Bialowieza Forest on May 29.

Poland says neighboring Belarus and its main supporter, Russia, are behind a surge in migrants from Belarus toward the European Union in a move to create a crisis.


 

Polish activists provide aid to an Algerian migrant who reached Poland's territory in the Bialowieza Forest.

The number of attempted illegal border crossings from Belarus into EU-member Poland has shot up in recent months to almost 400 a day from only a handful a day earlier this year, Polish officials say.
 

Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk (front right), Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz (center) and Interior Minister Tomasz Siemoniak (center right) visit troops in Dubicze Cerkiewna, eastern Poland, on May 29.

“We are not dealing with (just) any asylum seekers here, we are dealing with a coordinated, very efficient -- on many levels -- operation to break the Polish border and attempts to destabilize the country,” Tusk said.

Tusk's visit to the border follows a serious knife attack on a soldier near the village of Dubicze Cerkiewne when a migrant reached between the bars of the more than 5-meter-high barrier and stabbed a soldier in the ribs. Security forces were unable to detain the attacker because he was on the Belarusian side of the barrier, officials said. 

Poland’s border guards have decried the increasingly aggressive behavior by some migrants on the Belarus side of the border. 

Poland has reintroduced a 200-meter buffer zone following the attack on the soldier on the frontier and said it would use "all available means" to defend the NATO nation's border.

For the past several years, EU authorities have accused authoritarian Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko of weaponizing migration by luring people to his country to find an easier entry point into the bloc than the more dangerous routes across the Mediterranean Sea.

In November 2021, serious clashes broke out (pictured) between migrants and Polish border guards at the Poland-Belarus border near Grodno, Belarus.

Some 2,000 migrants were at the frontier in makeshift camps in the freezing weather, but only about 100 were believed to be involved in attacking the Polish forces at the crossing, said Border Guard spokeswoman Anna Michalska. 


 

Migrants settle for the night in a logistics center at the Belarus-Poland border near Grodno, Belarus, on November 16, 2021.

Human Rights Watch accused Belarusian authorities of manufacturing the crisis "without regard for the human consequences."

Poland has also been criticized by human rights groups for pushing migrants back into Belarus and not allowing them to apply for asylum.

“There is no room for negotiation. Poland’s border must be protected,” Tusk said.