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Another strain in the relationship between Poland and the EU has been Warsaw’s approach to handling the migrant crisis along its eastern border with Belarus.
Poland has been accused of taking a “heavy-handed” approach to the crisis, by erecting a barbed wire fence and has been accused by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees of forcing migrants back into Belarus instead of offering them asylum, Reuters reported.
Franek Sterczewski, a Polish parliamentary deputy with leading opposition group Civic Coalition, told the news agency that many of the migrants have been “wandering the forest for weeks” where the temperature at night is “around zero degrees.”
“It’s raining and it’s very cold,” he said. “Pushing them back will put their health and life at risk.”
Poland has been dealing with a surge in illegal migration from neighboring Belarus and has already announced plans to construct a border wall and earmarked $404 million for a construction that will span 60 miles.
Warsaw also announced last Monday that it would increase the number of troops by 10,000 to meet the demand.
The running theory is that Alexander Lukashenko, the Russia-backed leader in Minsk, is purposely sending these migrants—who are mainly from the Middle East and Africa—to destabilize the country, the Financial Times reported. Lukashenko has accused the EU of supporting the opposition in his country and has lashed out at sanctions.
Ursula von der Leyen, the EU chief, refused a request from Warsaw for Brussels to pick up the tab for the border wall. She said “there will be no funding of barbed wire and walls.”
Mariusz Blaszczak, Poland’s defense minister, said the troops will be sent from the 12th, 16th, and 18th divisions to guard the country’s eastern flank.
Many of these migrants hope to end up in Germany, which apparently has led to some German civilians patrolling its own border with Poland to keep the migrants out. The FT reported that about 50 “far-right German vigilantes” had been disarmed at the border.
TREND FORECAST: As we had forecast, as a result of the military conflicts, civil unrest and devastation caused by the COVID War that has destroyed the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of millions, there will be a flood of refugees seeking safe-haven nations.
Hundreds of millions of people across the globe –Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, Afghanistan, Africa, South America, hard-hit Asian nations will do all they can to escape poverty, violence, crime, and government corruption. In turn, there will be strong anti-immigration/anti-establishment populist movements among the countries they are trying to escape into.