“The situation at the Polish-Belarusian border is dire, it’s very difficult, because the border is very well protected, there are a lot of border guards. We’ve built a fence and we are still building the next fence in order to stop the illegal migration,” Marcin Przydacz, Poland’s deputy minister of foreign affairs, told Rudaw’s Bestoon Khalid on Tuesday. "It’s a very low possibility that someone can cross the border without being noticed."
Thousands of migrants, mostly from the Middle East, have tried to gain entry to EU nations from Belarus in recent months. The EU has accused Minsk of pushing migrants to their borders in protest of sanctions imposed in response to a crackdown on dissent. Przydacz said the “artificial migration crisis” created by Belarus is an attempt to exert pressure on EU countries.
“Don’t go to Belarus, I mean if you are Iraqi or Kurdish person who would like to apply for a visa just do it in your respected country rather than go to Belarus because there is absolutely no chance that you will cross the border, you will get trapped, you will deprived of documents and money and sent to the forest during the winter time,” Przydacz claimed.
“Given the fact that the winter is coming in Poland and Belarus, the temperatures are low it will be even worse. You know that in Poland we have quite harsh winters; minus 20, sometimes minus 30, so it’s being very very difficult at the border,” said the official.
On whether they will try to fix relations with Minsk, the deputy minister said “there are absolutely no signals that there will be any change of the EU policy toward Belarus. The only victim of this policy are citizens of Belarus and also citizens of other countries, including Iraq.”
Few have passed though, being put in detention at the Polish and Lithuanian borders, and they are “waiting to be sent back to Iraq.” Most of them are economic migrants, the official said, adding that there are special procedures for those who are political asylum-seekers, but there are “not many” applications for that.
He added that they are in talks with authorities in Iraq and the Kurdistan Region.
Polish campaigners warned of a humanitarian crisis last month as the migrant death toll on the border rose to six. There had been several cases of dire situations of Kurds on the border.
Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly identified Marcin Przydacz as the Deputy Prime Minister of Foreign Affairs. He is the deputy foreign minister.
Updated at 9:58 am, October 13, 2021
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