Activists detained in Poland for trying to remove fence on Belarus border amid migrant surge

A group of activists – 12 Polish and one Dutch citizen – have been detained on Poland’s border with Belarus. They are accused of trying to destroy part of a new barbed-wire fence erected there by the Polish government amid a surge in illegal crossings.

Poland’s interior minister has pledged that the group “will face all criminal consequences for their actions”. Among those reported to have been detained is a leading figure in an NGO whom Polish prosecutors have accused of laundering Russian money.

The Polish-Belarusian border has recently become an international and domestic political flashpoint, with unprecedented numbers of migrants – most reportedly from Iraq and Afghanistan – attempting to cross. The Polish government accuses Minsk of deliberately facilitating the crossings, and has stepped up border security.

But some human rights groups and opposition politicians – as well as the UN refugee agency – have accused the Polish authorities of illegitimately preventing asylum seekers from entering Poland.

On Sunday evening, Poland’s border guard announced that it had detained the 13 people and posted an image of what appeared to be the damage they are accused of causing. A spokeswoman, Anna Michalska, told the Polish Press Agency (PAP) that the group had planned to use two vehicles to stretch open the fence.

A video purporting to be of the incident in question was shared on Twitter by an individual who claimed to have been on the ground. It shows a group using stretch cords and a pair of wire cutters to damage the barbed-wire fencing, 150 kilometres of which was recently installed by the Polish army along the border.

Subsequently, the interior minister, Mariusz Kamiński, tweeted that the group’s actions were  “absolutely unacceptable”. He pledged that they and any others who carry out similar acts will face the full force of the law.

The border guard’s statement also noted that among those detained was someone called Bartosz K. (surnames of people facing charges are normally withheld under Polish law).

Soon after, Polish state broadcaster TVP named that individual as Bartosz Kramek. He is a board member of the Open Dialogue Foundation (ODF), a Warsaw-based NGO whose president is Kramek’s wife, Lyudmyla Kozlovska.

In 2018, Poland’s government sought to have Kozlovska, a Ukrainian national, banned from entering the European Schengen zone amid claims that ODF received secret Russian funding. Poland’s then foreign minister accused ODF of “pursuing anti-Polish goals”, including wanting “to overthrow the…democratically elected government”.

In June this year, Kramek was arrested and charged in Poland for allegedly laundering money through ODF on behalf of Russian and Ukrainian citizens. Kozlovska, Kramek and ODF have denied all claims of wrongdoing, and insist that the accusations against them are politically motivated.

After Kramek’s detention, dozens of Polish and international organisations and public figures – including Nobel Prize-winner Lech Wałęsa, Yale law professor Bruce Ackerman, and film director Agnieszka Holland – signed a letter “expressing deep concern” at the “government-led attacks and disinformation” against ODF.

Despite Warsaw issuing a call for her to be banned from Schengen, Kozlovska subsequently continued to travel freely within the zone. That included visits to give invited speeches at the German Bundestag and European Parliament.

The Polish government has accused Belarus’s President Alexander Lukashenko, a Kremlin ally, of engineering the recent surge in border crossings. This view has been echoed by the European Commission and the Baltic states of Lithuania and Latvia, which have also received large numbers of migrants.

Tweeting an image of the group attempting to remove the barbed wire on the border yesterday, Radosław Poszwiński, an employee of TVP (which is a government mouthpiece), called them “Putin and Lukashenko’s useful idiots”.

However, in a statement signed by the 13 activists – including Kramek – they said that Poland should “defend the border against Lukashenko and Putin, not their victims”. They called for the authorities to honour their constitutional duty to respect the rights of those seeking to apply for asylum.

Main image credit: Agnieszka Sadowska / Agencja Gazeta

Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.