“Poland defended itself from refugees in 2015 and will do so again,” says deputy PM

The government has promised to “defend Poland” against the latest surge in refugees, just as it did during the migration crisis of 2015. The remarks come amid a record number of migrants – mostly from Afghanistan and Iraq – seeking to cross the border from Belarus.

In response, Poland has dispatched the army to help secure the border, and has been erecting 150 kilometres of barbed-wire fencing. The government is also seeking to tighten asylum rules to block applications from those who crossed the border illegally from a transit country.

The number of people illegally crossing the border from Belarus has risen rapidly recently, with the Polish government accusing Minsk of deliberately using migrants as “living weapons” in a “hybrid war”.

Last night alone, 138 migrants tried to illegally cross the border, reports the interior ministry. Most of them, 130, were prevented from doing so by Polish border guards, while eight were detained on Polish territory.

According to the ministry, 2,100 migrants have attempted to illegally cross so far this month. Over 1,300 have been prevented from doing so, while 758 have been detained in Poland and sent to holding centres. In the whole of last year, just 120 such migrants were detained in Poland.

“Poland defended itself against the wave of refugees in 2015 and will manage to defend itself now too,” said Piotr Gliński, a deputy prime minister, speaking to Polsat News.

He added, however, that Poland would seek to “provide humanitarian aid to all those in need”, and would be willing to take in some refugees. But the number accepted would be decided by the Polish authorities, said Gliński.

Warsaw has already offered humanitarian visas to 45 Afghans who worked with Polish forces, as well as their families. Today, the first Polish evacuation flight departed Kabul with 50 people on board, only one of whom was a Polish citizen.

Meanwhile, with the number of migrants seeking to cross into Poland from Belarus rising rapidly, the defence minister, Mariusz Błaszczak, announced that he had dispatched the military to help “secure the border”. Over 900 soldiers are already involved in the operation.

One of their tasks has been to help install barbed-wire fencing along the 418-kilometre-long frontier with Belarus. A deputy interior minister, Maciej Wąsik, announced today that 100 kilometres of fencing had already been installed, with another 50 kilometres to follow.

The government is also seeking to change the law to allow the authorities not to process asylum claims from people who did not come “directly from the territory where their life or freedom was threatened” and cannot “present credible reasons for illegal entry”, reports Prawo.pl. It would also introduce penalties for illegally crossing the border.

Images and reports published by Polish media today show that around 50 people – mostly from Afghanistan – have created a makeshift camp on the border near Usnarz Górny, a village in north-eastern Poland. “They cannot go back to Belarus, [but] they cannot enter the territory of Poland,” reports TVN24.

According to Wąsik, the migrants are still on the Belarusian side of the border and will not be allowed to enter Polish territory as the border guard cannot let in “illegal immigrants”.

“The border is sealed,” wrote the deputy minister on social media. “We are acting swiftly and efficiently.”

Last year, Poland was found by the European Court of Human Rights to have violated the rights of asylum seekers crossing from Belarus by refusing to allow them to make asylum claims. Warsaw was ordered to pay compensation to two Chechen families.

In a separate case, the Court of Justice of the European Union also found last year that Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic had “failed to fulfil their obligations under EU law” by refusing to accept their quotas of mostly Muslim asylum seekers allocated by the European Commission in 2015.

Zbigniew Ziobro, the justice minister in Poland’s national-conservative government, condemned the latter ruling. “Poland was right not to accept refugees,” he said. “We defended our sovereignty against the foreign culture of Islam that they wanted to impose on us.”

Opinion polling has, however, shown that public attitudes towards refugees have warmed, with a majority now in favour of accepting them. Poland has also recorded one of the biggest increases in public acceptance of migrants among countries regularly surveyed by Gallup.

Agnieszka Wądołowska

Agnieszka Wądołowska is deputy editor of Notes from Poland. She has previously worked for Gazeta.pl and Tokfm.pl and contributed to Gazeta Wyborcza, Wysokie Obcasy, Duży Format, Midrasz and Kultura Liberalna