Migrants try to cross the Polish border after the camps were evacuated by Belarus

Poland accused Belarus on Friday of trucking hundreds of migrants back to the border and pressuring them to try to cross illegally, just hours after clearing camps on a border that has become the focus of a growing Eastern crisis. West.

Poland’s indictment suggests the crisis has not been resolved with an apparent reversal of course by Minsk, which on Thursday had cleared major fields along the border and allowed the first repatriation flight to Iraq in months.

European governments accuse Belarus of transporting thousands of people from the Middle East and pressuring them to try to cross the EU border illegally, where several people have died in frozen forests. Belarus denies having fueled the crisis.

Polish Border Guard spokeswoman Anna Michalska said Thursday night, just hours after clearing the camps, Belarusian authorities were already transporting hundreds of people and forcing them to try to cross in the dark.

“(Belarusians) were bringing more migrants to the place where there was a forced attempt to cross,” Michalska said. “At first there were 100 people, but then the Belarusian side brought more people in trucks. Then there were 500 people.”

When the migrants tried to cross the border, Belarusian troops blinded Polish guards with lasers, he told a news conference. Some migrants had thrown logs and four guards suffered minor injuries.

Access to the border on the Polish side is restricted by a state of emergency, making it difficult to verify your account.

“Nightmare”

In an interview with the BBC, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko reiterated denials of having orchestrated the crisis, but, when asked if Belarus was helping immigrants try to cross into Poland, he said: “I think that is absolutely possible. We are Slavs. We have hearts. ” . Our troops know that the migrants are heading to Germany. ”

“Maybe someone helped them. I’m not even going to investigate this.”

Migrants from the countryside on the Belarusian side were taken to a huge and crowded warehouse on Thursday, and journalists were able to film them. Children were running around on Friday morning and men playing cards while one cradled a small child in his lap.

Meanwhile, at a hospital in Bielsk Podlaski, on the Polish side, two migrants who had been captured after crossing received treatment, but were taken away by Polish border guards.

Before he was taken away, Mansour Nassar, 42, a father of six from Aleppo who had traveled to Belarus from Lebanon, described his ordeal for five days in the forest.

“The Belarusian army told us, ‘If you come back, we will kill you,'” he said through tears in his hospital bed. “We drink from ponds … Our people are always downtrodden.”

Kassam Shahadah, a Syrian refugee doctor living in Poland who helps at another hospital, said the patients were terrified of being forcibly returned to Belarus.

“What they have seen, what they have experienced on that side is a nightmare for them.”

Extreme suffering

Human rights groups say Poland has exacerbated the suffering by sending back those trying to cross. Poland says this is necessary to prevent more people from coming.

“I have personally heard the gruesome accounts of extreme suffering from desperate people, including many families, children and the elderly, who spent weeks or even months in miserable and extreme conditions in the cold and humid forests due to these setbacks,” said the Council. de Said the European Commissioner for Human Rights, Dunja Mijatović, after a four-day mission to Poland.

“I have witnessed clear signs of his painful experience: injuries, frostbite, exposure to extreme cold, exhaustion and stress,” he said. “I have no doubt that returning any of these people to the border will cause more extreme human suffering and more deaths.”

Polish border guards have recorded seven deaths at the border. Human rights groups say more than 10 people have died.

“Cynical and inhuman”

Europeans have avoided Lukashenko since last year’s disputed elections, but approached cautiously this week, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke with Lukashenko twice by phone.

But on Thursday, the European Commission and Germany rejected a proposal that Minsk said Lukashenko had made to Merkel, according to which EU countries would receive 2,000 immigrants and another 5,000 would be sent home.

The United States accused Minsk of using migrants as “pawns in its efforts to be disruptive.”

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Friday that the situation at the borders remains deeply worrying.

“The use that the Lukashenko regime makes of vulnerable people as a means to pressure other countries is cynical and inhumane. NATO stands in full solidarity with all affected allies.”

(REUTERS)