Category Archives: Poland

Belarus threatens to cut gas deliveries to EU if sanctioned over border crisis

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Lukashenko responds to possible sanctions as thousands of migrants camp in freezing temperatures at Poland border

Alexander Lukashenko has threatened to cut deliveries of gas to Europe via a major pipeline as the Belarusian leader promised to retaliate against any new EU sanctions imposed in response to the crisis at the Poland-Belarus border.

Backed by the Kremlin, Lukashenko has struck a defiant note after inciting a migrant crisis at the border, where thousands of people, mainly from Middle Eastern countries, are camped out as temperatures plunge below freezing.

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Poland-Belarus crisis volunteers: ‘Border police can be very aggressive’

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Grupa Granica strives to bring supplies to stranded migrants and help them deal with border officers

The call came in at about 1.30pm in the afternoon. A group of 15 people, all Iraqi Kurds, had been found in the woods of Narewka after managing to cross the border from Belarus into Poland. One woman could barely walk. Others had early signs of hypothermia.

The young volunteer who answered the phone – one of about 40 members of Grupa Granica, a Polish network of NGOs monitoring the situation on the border – knew they had to act quickly.

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Polish PM blames Vladimir Putin for Belarus border crisis

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Mateusz Morawiecki says Russian president is mastermind behind flow of migrants towards EU borders

Poland’s prime minister has accused Vladimir Putin of “masterminding” the migrant crisis on Belarus’s border with the EU, while Minsk’s key ally in the Kremlin pointed the blame at Europe.

The escalating rhetoric, including claims from the Belarusian leader, Alexander Lukashenko, that Russia could join a potential conflict at the border, has underlined the role that regional alliances are playing in the standoff and ensuing humanitarian crisis.

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‘Unacceptable’: migrants face ‘desperate situation’ at Poland-Belarus border

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Children and families among those being warned to ‘go back to Minsk’ as police hostility and humanitarian crisis worsens

For two days the same looped recording has been blaring out from speakers on the Polish border: “Attention! Attention! Crossing the Polish border is legal only at border crossings.”

The ominous warning is directed at the thousands of asylum seekers massed in Belarus on the opposite side of the barbed wire running between the two countries.

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Poland-Belarus border crisis: what is going on and who is to blame?

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Thousands of migrants are in the freezing region trying to get into Poland and aid is prevented from reaching them

More than 1,000 people, many fleeing dangerous conditions in Middle Eastern countries, arrived en masse at Poland’s border with Belarus this week, in a dramatic escalation of a simmering migration crisis on the edge of the EU. They had been escorted to the border by Belarusian authorities.

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Germany urges unity as crisis worsens for migrants at Poland-Belarus border

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German interior minister says Poland needs support to deal with ‘hybrid threat’ of politically organised migration

Germany needs to get the “whole of the democratic world” onboard to support orderly immigration to Europe, its interior minister has said, amid a worsening crisis at the Poland-Belarus border.

Horst Seehofer accused Belarus and Russia of exploiting refugees and migrants in an attempt to destabilise the west, and said EU countries must stand together in the face of a “hybrid threat” posed by “politically organised migration”.

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Tensions rise as Belarus escorts migrants towards Polish border – video

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Polish authorities have accused Belarus of trying to spark a major confrontation as footage showed hundreds of migrants walking towards the Polish border. Belarusian State Border Committee shared drone footage of Polish police in riot gear guarding the Polish border as migrants were gathering on the Belarusian side, behind barbed wire. The US has called on the government of Belarus to immediately halt its campaign of orchestrating and coercing irregular migration flows across its borders.

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Belarus escorts hundreds of migrants towards Polish border

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Column of up to 500 people including children led by border guards in escalation of deadly crisis

Belarusian authorities have escorted as many as 500 people, most of whom are from the Middle East, to the Polish border in an escalation of a deadly crisis that has already left people desperate to reach the EU trapped between borders and at least seven dead due to exposure.

Videos published by Belarusian media on Monday showed armed Belarusian border guards in combat fatigues escorting the column of people, which included families with children, along a highway from the border town of Bruzgi and towards a forest that runs alongside Poland’s Podlaskie region.

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Few willing to change lifestyle to save the planet, climate survey finds

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Exclusive: poll of 10 countries including US, UK, France and Germany finds people prioritising measures that are already habits

Citizens are alarmed by the climate crisis, but most believe they are already doing more to preserve the planet than anyone else, including their government, and few are willing to make significant lifestyle changes, an international survey has found.

“The widespread awareness of the importance of the climate crisis illustrated in this study has yet to be coupled with a proportionate willingness to act,” the survey of 10 countries including the US, UK, France and Germany, observed.

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On the frozen frontiers of Europe with the migrants caught in a lethal game

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Asylum seekers are pawns in a conflict between Poland and Belarus

On the outskirts of the Białowieża forest – which bestrides the border between south-east Poland and Belarus – a group of seven Iraqi Kurds make their weary way towards the Polish hamlet of Grodzisk.

The latest miles of their journey have been from Belarus – crossing back and forth twice, deported after their first and second attempts. Now a third time: through sub-zero temperatures, across the primeval forest’s marshy terrain. Among them are two children: an eight-month-old girl and a two-year-old boy. When we came upon them, they were afraid to get up off the ground and begged us not to call the police, whispering: “They’ll kill us.”

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Poles march against abortion ban after pregnant woman’s death

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Protesters link woman’s death by septic shock to new restrictions on ending unviable pregnancies

“Her heart was beating too,” thousands of protesters across Poland chanted on Saturday during demonstrations sparked by the death of a pregnant 30-year-old woman in hospital. Her family say that the hospital staff refused her life-saving health care because they were afraid of breaking the country’s strict abortion law.

Demonstrators were joined by senior opposition politicians, including Donald Tusk, the former president of the European Council.

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Polish activists protest after woman’s death in wake of strict abortion law

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Demonstrations and candlelit vigil after woman, 30, dies of septic shock in 22nd week of pregnancy

A Polish hospital has said that doctors and midwives did everything they could to save the lives of a pregnant woman and her foetus in a case that has put the spotlight on the country’s new stricter abortion law.

The 30-year-old woman died of septic shock in her 22nd week of pregnancy. Doctors did not perform an abortion, even though her foetus was lacking amniotic fluid, according to a lawyer for the family.

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Poland fined €1m a day over controversial judicial system changes

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Warsaw calls European court of justice move blackmail and says penalties ‘not the right road’

Poland has been fined €1m (£845,000) a day by the European court of justice for ignoring a ruling that it must suspend its controversial judicial system changes.

The inflammatory move, which runs contrary to recent words of caution from the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, was immediately denounced in Warsaw as “blackmail”.

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German police halt armed far-right vigilantes on Polish border

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Weapons seized after call from far-right party for members to prevent migrants from entering country

German police say they have stopped more than 50 far-right vigilantes armed with pepper spray, a bayonet, a machete and batons who were trying to patrol the Polish border to stop migrants entering the country.

The vigilantes were following a call by the Third Way, a far-right party with suspected links to neo-Nazi groups, for its members to stop illegal crossings near the town of Guben.

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Freezing to death: the migrants left to die on the Poland-Belarus border – video

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Migrants are dying in Poland's forested border with Belarus, as the countries are locked in a geopolitical standoff. Polish authorities accuse Belarus of deliberately abandoning migrants near its border in an attempt to destabilise the EU because the bloc imposing sanctions on Belarus after its disputed election. 

Poland has responded by declaring an emergency zone, forbidden to journalists and activists, where it is believed that, hidden from sight, they are illegally forcing people seeking asylum back over the border instead of processing applications. We follow Piotr Bystrianin, an activist trying to locate desperate migrants in the woods before the border guards do

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More than 30,000 Polish women sought illegal or foreign abortions since law change last year

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Tens of thousands have travelled to other European countries including England for legal terminations since near-total ban, campaigners say

At least 34,000 women in Poland are known to have sought abortions illegally or abroad since the country introduced a near total ban on terminations a year ago.

According to Abortion Without Borders (AWB), an organisation that helps women access safe abortion services, more than 1,000 Polish women have sought second-trimester abortions in foreign clinics since the country passed draconian new laws.

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Angela Merkel calls for compromise amid row over Polish ECJ snub

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German chancellor offers olive branch to Warsaw at what may prove to be her last EU summit

Angela Merkel, who earlier this week reflected on her deep hurt over Brexit, has called for European Union countries to compromise over their competing visions of integration, at what was being billed in Brussels as a farewell summit for the German chancellor.

The attempt by Merkel, at her 107th and possibly final EU summit, to smooth over a dispute over Poland’s rejection of European court of justice rulings, in an olive branch to Warsaw, came as the Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, demanded tough action, and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán rallied to the defence of the Polish government.

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Polish prime minister escalates war of words with EU over rule of law

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Mateusz Morawiecki says European court’s ‘creeping revolution’ undermines Polish sovereignty

Poland’s prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, has clashed with the European Commission president and MEPs after accusing EU institutions of seeking to turn the country into a province, in an escalation of the battle between Warsaw and Brussels over the rule of law.

During a heated debate in the European parliament in Strasbourg, where parallels between the Polish situation and Brexit were raised repeatedly by MEPs, Morawiecki claimed the European court of justice (ECJ) was responsible for a “creeping revolution” undermining Poland’s sovereignty.

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