A baby Java mouse-deer has been born at Warsaw Zoo, Poland. The new arrival is around 10cm tall and its sex is not yet known. The arrival comes after Warsaw Zoo welcomed its first mouse-deer, Arnold, in 2020, before he was joined by Linda in July this year. Mouse-deer are among the smallest hooved animals on the planet
Continue reading...Category Archives: Poland
Helping refugees starving in Poland’s icy border forests is illegal – but it’s not the real crime | Anna Alboth
The asylum seekers on the Poland-Belarus border are not aggressors: they are desperate pawns in a disgusting political struggle
One thought is a constant in my head: “I have kids at home, I cannot go to jail, I cannot go to jail.” The politics are beyond my reach or that of the victims on the Poland-Belarus border. It involves outgoing German chancellor, Angela Merkel, getting through to Alexander Lukashenko, president of Belarus. It’s ironic that this border has more than 50 media crews gathered, yet Poland is the only place in the EU where journalists cannot freely report.
Meanwhile, the harsh north European winter is closing in and my fingers are freezing in the dark snowy nights.
Continue reading...Fortress Europe: the millions spent on military-grade tech to deter refugees
We map out the rising number of high-tech surveillance and deterrent systems facing asylum seekers along EU borders
From military-grade drones to sensor systems and experimental technology, the EU and its members have spent hundreds of millions of euros over the past decade on technologies to track down and keep at bay the refugees on its borders.
Poland’s border with Belarus is becoming the latest frontline for this technology, with the country approving last month a €350m (£300m) wall with advanced cameras and motion sensors.
Continue reading...Lives lost at Europe’s borders and Afghan MPs in exile: human rights this fortnight – in pictures
A roundup of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Mexico to Manila
Continue reading...Poland plans to set up register of pregnancies to report miscarriages
Proposed register would come into effect in January, a year after near-total ban on abortion
Poland is planning to introduce a centralised register of pregnancies that would oblige doctors to report all pregnancies and miscarriages to the government.
The proposed register would come into effect in January 2022, a year after Poland introduced a near-total ban on abortion.
Continue reading...ECJ adviser backs rule-of-law measure in blow to Poland and Hungary
Court advised to dismiss challenge against law that lets EU block funds to states that curb judicial independence
EU authorities can cut funds to member states that are corrupt and curb independent courts, a senior adviser to the bloc’s top court has said.
In a setback for the nationalist governments of Poland and Hungary, a European court of justice senior lawyer said a law linking EU funds to respect for the rule of law was legally sound.
Continue reading...Lawyers turn to romcoms in fight for rule of law in Poland
Instead of drafting legal papers, award-winning group make short films intended to explain assault on judiciary
It was a summer day in 2017 when Sylwia Gregorczyk-Abram, a 34-year-old lawyer, heard a crazy idea.
She had been messaged by a legal acquaintance, Michał Wawrykiewicz, who like her was worried about changes that Poland’s nationalist government was introducing to the judicial system. He wondered how they could convince people that the independence of the judiciary was not some abstract nicety but the firm ground underpinning democracy.
Continue reading...Pandemic hits mental health of women and young people hardest, survey finds
Survey also finds adults aged 18-24 and women more concerned about personal finances than other groups
Young people and women have taken the hardest psychological and financial hit from the pandemic, a YouGov survey has found – but few people anywhere are considering changing their lives as a result of it.
The annual YouGov-Cambridge Globalism Project found that in many of the 27 countries surveyed, young people were consistently more likely than their elders to feel the Covid crisis had made their financial and mental health concerns worse.
Continue reading...People used as ‘living shields’ in migration crisis, says Polish PM – video
The Polish prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, says people from the Middle East are being used as 'living shields' as his country faces a 'new type of war', in reference to the migration crisis on its border with Belarus.
Critics in the west have accused Belarus of artificially creating the crisis by bringing in people – mostly from the Middle East – and taking them to the border with promises of an easy crossing into the EU
Continue reading...Migrant caravan and Qatar’s tarnished World Cup: human rights this fortnight – in pictures
A roundup of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Pakistan to Poland
Continue reading...Lukashenko says Belarusian troops may have helped refugees reach Europe
Leader acknowledges it was ‘absolutely possible’ his army had a part in creating migrant crisis at Polish border
The Belarusian leader, Alexander Lukashenko, has acknowledged that his troops probably helped Middle Eastern asylum seekers cross into Europe, in the clearest admission yet that he engineered the new migrant crisis on the border with the EU.
In an interview with the BBC at his presidential palace in Minsk, he said it was “absolutely possible” that his troops helped migrants across the frontier into Poland.
Continue reading...One-year-old Syrian child dies in forest on Poland-Belarus border
Boy is youngest known victim of crisis as medical workers say family was living in forest for a month
A one-year-old child from Syria has died in a forest in Poland near the border with Belarus, according to Polish medical workers, becoming the youngest known victim of the crisis on the eastern edge of the European Union.
Thousands of people attempting to reach the EU are still stranded in freezing conditions, amid a standoff between the bloc and Belarus, which has been accused of deliberately creating the crisis by flying in people from the Middle East and facilitating their travel to the border.
Continue reading...Support for populist sentiment falls across Europe, survey finds
YouGov/Guardian poll finds ‘clear pattern of decreasing support for populism’ in European countries
Support for populist sentiment in Europe has fallen sharply over the past three years, according to a major YouGov survey, with markedly fewer people agreeing with key statements designed to measure it.
The YouGov-Cambridge Globalism Project’s annual populism tracker, produced with the Guardian, found populist beliefs in broadly sustained decline in 10 European countries, prompting its authors to suggest the wider electoral appeal of some may have peaked.
Continue reading...Lukashenko has got the ear of the EU at last – but it won’t help him
The Belarusian leader may have won phone talks with Angela Merkel but Europe remains united against him
As migrants camped out in the woods prepared for another night of sub-zero temperatures, the Estonian foreign minister, Eva-Maria Liimets, on Tuesday revealed to an evening news programme the gist of what Alexander Lukashenko demanded of Angela Merkel in the first call between a European leader and Belarus’s dictator in more than a year.
“He wants the sanctions to be halted, [and] to be recognised as head of state so he can continue,” she said he told Merkel.
Continue reading...Belarusian border crisis could last for months, says Polish minister
Warning comes as police fire teargas and deploy water cannon against people trying to cross into Poland
Poland’s defence minister has said the crisis on the Belarusian border could last for months, as Alexander Lukashenko claimed he had agreed to direct talks with the European Union on solving the crisis.
The agreement was reported by Belarusian state media, which said that Lukashenko and the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, spoke on Wednesday for the second time this week.
Continue reading...Polish police fire teargas at people trying to cross from Belarus
Footage also shows water cannon being used as dozens of men approach border fence throwing rocks
Polish riot police on the country’s border with Belarus have fired water cannon and teargas at people forcibly attempting to cross into the European Union.
The clashes come a day after EU governments approved sanctions against the Belarusian leader, Alexander Lukashenko, for allegedly engineering the crisis by allowing thousands of asylum-seekers from the Middle East to travel through Belarus to the border with Poland.
Continue reading...Poland-Belarus border crisis: water cannon and teargas fired at migrants – video report
Polish riot police on the country’s border with Belarus have fired water cannon and teargas at people forcibly attempting to cross into the European Union. Dozens of men threw rocks and approached a fence near the border crossing at the Polish town of Kuźnica. The clashes come a day after EU governments approved sanctions against the Belarusian leader, Alexander Lukashenko, for allegedly engineering the crisis by allowing thousands of asylum seekers from the Middle East to travel through Belarus to the border with Poland
Continue reading...EU agrees new sanctions against Belarus over border crisis
Sanctions to target ‘people, airlines, travel agencies and everyone involved in this illegal push of migrants’
The EU has agreed on new sanctions against Belarus targeting “everyone involved” in facilitating the transport of people to Belarus’s border with Poland, where thousands are stuck in makeshift camps in freezing weather.
The EU accuses Alexander Lukashenko’s regime of waging a “hybrid attack” against the bloc by allowing people from the Middle East who are desperate to reach the EU to fly into Minsk then head for the Polish border.
Continue reading...Fortress EU is beating Belarus, with refugees as pawns in cruel game
Analysis: Lukashenko’s strategy seems to have backfired, with a united European Union placing sanctions against his regime
There was chaos at the border. Thousands of Middle Eastern refugees and migrants had massed at the crossing point to the European Union, hoping for a better life. Many had been taken to the barbed-wire fence on state-funded buses, after the authoritarian leader made good on years-long threats “to open the gates to Europe”. But when people arrived, the hope of a better life collided with police teargas and stun grenades.
This was not a scene from the Polish-Belarus border this week, but Greece’s land border with Turkey less than two years ago.
Continue reading...Polish PM urges ‘concrete steps’ by Nato to address border crisis
EU to impose new sanctions against Lukashenko regime as dozens of asylum seekers reportedly break through from Belarus
The Polish prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, has called for Nato to take “concrete steps” to solve the migrant crisis on Europe’s border as dozens of asylum seekers reportedly broke through Poland’s border defences with Belarus.
Morawiecki said that Poland, Lithuania and Latvia may ask for consultations under article 4 of the Nato charter, indicating they believe their territorial integrity, political independence or security is threatened.
Continue reading...