Tusk pledges further “fortification” of Belarus border amid “hybrid war of illegal migration”

Prime Minister Donald Tusk has pledged to increase Poland’s defences on its border with Belarus, where he says it is facing a “hybrid war”, including through “illegal migration”.

However, his approach has been met with criticism from humanitarian organisations as well as an MEP from the prime minister’s own political group and renowned film director Agnieszka Holland, who accused the government of continuing the “inhuman rhetoric” of its predecessors.

On Saturday, Tusk visited the border and met with soldiers, border guards and police who have been working to secure the frontier amid an ongoing crisis that has seen tens of thousands of migrants and asylum seekers – mostly from the Middle East, Asia and Africa – try to cross from Belarus since 2021.

“I came today primarily so that both the commanders and their subordinates have no doubt that the Polish state and the Polish government are with them in every situation here on the border,” said the prime minister.

During his speech, he promised that “there will be no [spending] limits when it comes to securing the border”. He also announced that the government has begun “intensive work on [building] modern…fortifications along the entire Polish border with the east”.

“This border is an absolutely unique place due to the pressure of illegal migration,” said Tusk. “In fact we are dealing with a developing hybrid war.”

The latter term is one that was regularly used by Poland’s former Law and Justice (PiS) government as well as the European Union to describe the way in which Belarus was encouraging and helping migrants to cross illegally into the EU.

Under Tusk’s government, which replaced PiS in December, border forces have continued a controversial practice of “pushing back” into Belarus many of those who cross illegally. This has been found illegal by some Polish courts and condemned by rights groups and a UN special rapporteur.

While visiting the border on Saturday, Tusk announced legal changes “that will give our soldiers and officers a full sense of legal security in the activities you undertake here”. He did not, however, provide any further details.

The Tusk government’s policies and rhetoric regarding the Belarus border have been met with criticism even by some within his own camp.

“I dreamt that Poland would be the first country to say: ‘We do not use pushbacks and we do not violate human rights.’ So I am disappointed,” Janina Ochojska, an MEP from Tusk’s European People’s Party and president of Polish Humanitarian Action (PAH), told news website Wirtualna Polska.

“The methods have remained the same…[and] unfortunately inhuman rhetoric is still used,” added renowned film director Agnieszka Holland, whose critically acclaimed film Green Border last year depicted the plight of refugees at the Polish-Belarusian border.

She accused the new border guard spokesman of using “dehumanising” language by describing those crossing the border as the “tools” of Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko. Holland added that “muscle flexing” by Poland regarding the border is exactly what “Lukashenko and Putin want”.

Such criticism was, however, rejected by deputy defence minister Paweł Zalewski, who told Wirtualna Polska that strengthening the border was in fact being done “for humanitarian reasons: the more difficult it is to cross, the fewer people will want to do it”.

Another deputy defence minister, Cezary Tomczyk, told broadcaster TVN on Sunday that the government is working to improve the border defences built by the PiS government, which he called “a makeshift solution” that migrants have continued to be able to bypass.

A leaked internal border guard document published earlier this year showed that 2023 saw a rise in the number of attempted crossings into Poland from Belarus. It also showed a rise in the number then reaching Germany, which is the most common target destination for the migrants.

This year, Polish border guards have continued to note large numbers of attempted crossings, including a “very aggressive” group of around 140 people last Friday. They threw stones and tree branches at Polish officers, who managed to prevent them from crossing.

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Main image credit: Krystian Maj/KPRM (under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Agata Pyka

Agata Pyka is an assistant editor at Notes from Poland. She is a journalist and a political communication student at the University of Amsterdam. She specialises in Polish and European politics as well as investigative journalism and has previously written for Euractiv and The European Correspondent.