Warsaw says border area entry ban helps deter illegal migration

August 22, Pozirk. Illegal border crossings into Poland via Belarus plunged 70 percent after the border area entry ban entered into force on June 13, gov.pl reported.

Over the past 70 days, Poland thwarted 4,276 illegal border crossings compared to at least 13,675 attempts recorded in a similar period from April 5 to June 12, it noted.

More than 17,000 police officers and about 5,500 soldiers have been deployed since June 13 to guard the Polish-Belarusian border, the report said, noting that at least 230 people were arrested this summer for facilitating illegal migration.

The 90-day ban is enforced along about 60 km of the Polish-Belarusian border in Podlaskie Voivodeship. In some sections, it is 200 meters wide, while in the Białowieża Forest it extends up to two kilometers. The ban does not cover towns and tourist routes.

The Polish Border Guard said it issued 148 border area entry permits, including 97 to journalists.

The migration crisis at the Belarusian-EU border started in spring 2021 after Alaksandar Łukašenka, angered by EU sanctions, had indicated that Minsk would not prevent migrants from Africa and Asia from using Belarus as a route to the EU.

Warsaw sees the crisis as a “hybrid war” against Poland, organized and coordinated by Minsk and Moscow. Poland constructed a 186-km long border fence at its shared border with Belarus designed to deter illegal migrants trying to enter the EU.

Over the past three years, at least 116 foreigners, including 15 women, died while trying to cross into the EU via Belarus, the Belarusian human rights organization Human Constanta, Latvia’s Gribu palīdzēt bēgļiem and Poland’s Ocalenie Foundation said in a report last month.

Tension remains high between Belarus and Poland over an imprisoned Polish minority leader and the uninvestigated murder of a Polish soldier at the border.

After Belarus sentenced journalist Anrej Pačobut (Pol. Andrzej Poczobut) to prison in February 2023, Poland closed Bobrowniki, one of the two border crossings available to travelers, indefinitely.

Warsaw expects Minsk to meet its demands – end the migration crisis, release the journalist and cooperate in identifying and arresting a suspect in the murder of Mateusz Sitek, a Polish serviceman stabbed at the Belarusian-Polish border while on duty in May 28, Polish Interior Minister Tomasz Semoniak said earlier this month.

Gazeta Wyborcza contributor Pačobut, also known as an activist of the unregistered Union of Poles in Belarus (UPB), has been in custody since March 2021.

He was arrested after masked police officers raided his home in Hrodna on March 25.

On the same day, the Prosecutor General’s Office announced that it had instituted criminal proceedings against UPB leader Andzelika Borys and “other individuals.”

It said that the criminal case had been opened under Part Three of the Criminal Code’s Article 130, which penalizes incitement to racial, ethnic, religious or other social hatred and “the rehabilitation of Nazism.”

“The individuals, positioning themselves as members of the above mentioned union, have organized and held a number of illegal mass events with the involvement of under-18-year-olds in the city of Hrodna and in other localities in the [Hrodna] region since 2018 with a view to honoring members of anti-Soviet gangs that were active during and after the [1941-1945] Great Patriotic War, committed robberies, murdered Belarus’ civilians, destroyed property. Their actions were aimed at rehabilitating Nazism and justifying the genocide of the Belarusian people,” the Prosecutor General’s Office charged.

Later, prosecutors also accused Pačobut of calling for sanctions.

In 2022, Pačobut refused to petition Łukašenka for pardon.

The Committee for State Security (KGB) put him on the list of “persons involved in terrorist activities.”

Of five defendants in the case, Pačobut is the only one to remain in prison.

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Long queues at Polish border as standoff continues with Belarus over imprisoned journalist

August 20, Pozirk. Belarusian border guards have reported long queues at the Polish border as standoff continues between the two countries over illegal migration and the persecution of a journalist. Ninety buses en route to Poland were waiting in the …

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