Category Archives: Belarus

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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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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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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Has Interpol become the long arm of oppressive regimes?

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Once used in the hunt for fugitive criminals, the global police agency’s most-wanted ‘red notice’ list now includes political refugees and dissidents

Flicking through the news one day in early 2015, Alexey Kharis, a California-based businessman and father of two, came across a startling announcement: Russia would request a global call for his arrest through the International Criminal Police Organization, known as Interpol.

“Oh, wow,” Kharis thought, shocked. All the 46-year-old knew about Interpol and its pursuit of the world’s most-wanted criminals was from novels and films. He tried to reassure himself that things would be OK and it was just an intimidatory tactic of the Russian authorities. Surely, he reasoned, the world’s largest police organisation had no reason to launch a hunt for him.

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Poland criticised over stranded migrants after seventh death at border

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Identity documents suggest latest person to die was 24-year-old Syrian who arrived in Belarus last month

Polish police have found another body near the border with Belarus amid fresh allegations that Warsaw is breaking international law in its treatment of migrants stranded in harrowing conditions on the EU’s eastern frontier.

The man’s body was spotted in a field by a helicopter crew, police said, bringing to seven the number of people reported by Polish, Latvian, Lithuanian and Belarusian authorities to have died trying to cross the border since the summer.

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Concerns grow over Poland’s treatment of migrants stuck at Belarus border

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Warsaw defies critics to extend state of emergency as it seeks to portray migrants as dangerous

Concerns over Poland’s treatment of migrants stranded on its border with Belarus are mounting after Warsaw this week ignored domestic and international criticism to extend a state of emergency and sought to portray them as dangerous deviants.

The European commissioner for Home Affairs, Ylva Johansson, met the Polish interior minister, Mariusz Kamiński, in Warsaw on Thursday night but won no concessions on the bloc’s request for monitors from the EU’s Frontex border force to be allowed into the zone, despite growing fears for the migrants’ safety after the deaths of at least five people.

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EU seeks to tighten Belarus visa rules amid growing migrant crisis

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Bloc accuses Lukashenko of incentivising migrants to cross Belarus’s border with the EU

The European Commission has said it wants to suspend easy access to visas for Belarusian officials in an attempt to deter it from pushing migrants from the Middle East and Africa across its border with the bloc.

Neighbouring Poland, Lithuania and Latvia have declared states of emergency after a sharp increase in arrivals at their borders with Belarus, accusing the country’s dictator, Alexander Lukashenko, of an act of “hybrid warfare” in seeking to orchestrate a EU migrant crisis.

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Four migrants found dead on Poland-Belarus border

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Minsk accused of abandoning migrants at frontier in attempt to put pressure on EU

Four people stranded on the border between Poland and Belarus have died in recent days, officials have said, amid continuing allegations that Minsk is abandoning migrants at its frontier in an attempt to put pressure on the EU.

Polish authorities confirmed that three people, including an Iraqi man, were found dead, of hypothermia and exhaustion, on the Polish side of the border on Saturday, while the body of a woman was seen lying on the Belarus side on Sunday.

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Texas anti-abortion law shows ‘terrifying’ fragility of women’s rights, say activists

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Campaigners fear ban emboldens anti-choice governments as more aggressive opposition, better organised and funded, spreads from US

The new anti-abortion law in Texas is a “terrifying” reminder of the fragility of hard-won rights, pro-choice activists have said, as they warn of a “more aggressive, much better organised [and] better funded” global opposition movement.

Pro-choice campaigners have seen several victories in recent years, including in Ireland, Argentina and, most recently, Mexico, where the supreme court ruled last week that criminalising abortion was unconstitutional. Another is hoped for later this month when the tiny enclave of San Marino, landlocked within Italy, holds a highly charged referendum.

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The disappeared in Mexico, Afghan female footballers and a giant puppet: human rights this fortnight in pictures

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A roundup of the coverage of the struggle for human rights and freedoms from Thailand to Texas

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Putin and Lukashenko move to integrate economies of Russia and Belarus

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Russian president announces agreement on macroeconomic policies, and common tax and customs measures

Vladimir Putin and Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko said they had made progress toward integrating the two countries’ economies during a summit on Thursday evening in advance of massive joint military exercises.

Speaking late on Thursday, Putin said the two leaders had agreed to coordinate the countries’ macroeconomic policies, institute common tax and customs measures, and harmonise other financial controls as part of a 28-point roadmap that is expected to increase Russia’s influence over its neighbour.

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Belarus repression and the Taliban advance: human rights this fortnight – in pictures

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A round-up of the coverage of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Thailand to Mexico

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New wave of arrests in Belarus as more than 20 detained in two days

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Opposition figure, lawyers and former envoy among latest detained in six cities a year after disputed presidential poll

Belarusian authorities have detained more than 20 people in the latest wave of arrests, continuing their sweeping crackdown on dissent a year after a disputed presidential election, human rights activists say.

Belarus was rocked by protests which were fuelled by the 9 August 2020 re-election of the authoritarian president, Alexander Lukashenko, to a sixth term in a vote that the opposition and the west rejected as a sham. Lukashenko responded to the demonstrations, the largest of which drew up to 200,000 people, with huge repressions in which more than 35,000 people were arrested and thousands beaten by police.

Belarusian authorities have ramped up the clampdown in recent months, arresting scores of independent journalists, activists and all those deemed not loyal. The Viasna human rights centre said on Thursday that more than 20 people have been detained over the past two days in six cities across the country.

Related: Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya: ‘Belarusians weren’t ready for this level of cruelty’

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Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya: ‘Belarusians weren’t ready for this level of cruelty’

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Opposition leader speaks to the Guardian a year after anti-Lukashenko protests began, as crackdown continues

A year has passed since Belarusians took to the streets to challenge the authoritarian leader, Alexander Lukashenko, over stolen elections, marking the greatest crisis of his 27 years in power and the most harrowing year in the country’s modern history.

In an interview, the opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya issued a message of defiance tinged with pain as she detailed the toll that the last year has taken on the 35,000 jailed, hundreds tortured, and thousands more forced to flee the country or hide from Lukashenko’s crackdown.

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