Skip to main content

Poland completes anti-refugee wall along border with Belarus

A YEAR after migrants started crossing into the European Union from Belarus to Poland, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and top security officials visited the border area today to mark the completion of a new steel wall.

The Polish authorities are also set to lift the “state of emergency” along the border today that has blocked journalists, rights workers and others from witnessing the human rights crisis.

At the very least, 20 people have died in the area’s freezing forests and bogs.

While the Polish government has characterised the wall as part of the fight against Russia, human rights defenders have called out the hypocrisy of white Christian refugees from Ukraine being welcomed but others being rejected and mistreated.

A Human Rights Watch report this month said Poland “unlawfully, and sometimes violently, summarily pushes migrants and asylum-seekers back to Belarus, where they face serious abuses, including beatings and rape by border guards and other security forces.”

OWNED BY OUR READERS

We're a reader-owned co-operative, which means you can become part of the paper too by buying shares in the People’s Press Printing Society.

 

 

Become a supporter

Fighting fund

You've Raised:£ 13,288
We need:£ 4,712
3 Days remaining
Donate today