The tension between Poland and Belarus is growing exponentially this Monday as several thousand immigrants try to storm the Polish border, generating different clashes with the security forces deployed in the area. Some sources have indicated that at least it has been verified that more than two thousand refugees are in front of the barbed wire.
“More than two thousand refugees , including women and children, are in front of the fence on the border with Poland,” reported the state border committee of Belarus, noting that irregular migrants aim to reach the European Union (EU) as they “do not consider Belarus as a destination.” The situation on the Belarusian-Polish border remains very tense.
In this sense, from Warsaw it has been ensured that Minsk would be behind this increase in immigrants and refugees that have unleashed the wave of attempts to approach the Polish border. Poland’s Deputy Foreign Minister, Piotr Wawrzyk, on Monday told Minsk to “generate a serious incident, preferably where casualties are produced and ammunition is fired. They are preparing a provocation, an attempt to cross the border en masse. ‘
According to the official Belarusian agency, BELTA, most of the immigrants are Kurds, who want to cross into Polish territory and later settle in Germany. Many of the refugees are traveling with young children and lack food, water and warm clothing, said the source, whose photos show entire families sitting around bonfires.
Opposition leader Svetlana Tijanovskaya, who is in exile, has demanded that the European Union respond to the authoritarian regime that controls her country: “Seek an escalation in the border crisis. Immigrants are being pushed to the border by Belarusian gunmen. ‘
European Court of Human Rights
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has condemned Poland for the treatment inflicted on two judges by a body of the Supreme Court that supervises the activity of judges, since it considers that it acted without impartiality or independence, in a new legal blow to the battery of reforms undertaken by the ruling Law and Justice Party (PiS) .
Poland is in the crosshairs of European institutions for a reform that introduced a marked political variable in internal judicial decisions. In this case, the ruling examines the work of the Supreme Chamber of Extraordinary Control and Public Affairs, composed of judges appointed by the president at the proposal of the National Council of the Judiciary, appointed in turn by Parliament.
The ECHR has unanimously concluded that the rights of two Polish judges, Monika Dolinska-Ficek and Artur Ozimek, who unsuccessfully requested new destinations in 2017 and 2018, respectively, were violated. The bodies that regulate the activity of judges refused to recommend them for the positions they requested and the appeals presented were also in vain – the case was shelved in 2019.
The European court maintains that their cases were not analyzed by “a court established by law”, but by a chamber that lacks independence, which is why it condemns the Polish State to compensate each of the plaintiffs with 15,000 euros in concept Of Damage.
Likewise , the ECHR, linked to the Council of Europe, urges the Polish authorities to adopt measures to prevent similar cases from being repeated in the future, which involves reversing judicial reforms that have also reached the Court of Justice of the European Union, which already imposed a daily fine of one million euros in October for the controversial disciplinary regime against judges.
The European Commission condemns the attitude of Belarus
The European Commission reiterated this Monday its condemnation of Belarus’ “desperate attempt” to try to destabilize the European Union by favoring the illegal smuggling of migrants to Poland, while encouraging Warsaw to take the step of requesting the help of Frontex and Europol to strengthen border control and ensure adequate treatment of migrants.
Brussels is observing the situation at the border with care and concern and maintains “intensive” contacts with the Polish government, which has informed it that every week about “three thousand people” try to cross from Belarus and that there are currently “several hundred »Of migrants waiting on the Belarusian side of the border, said the community spokesman for Migration, Adalbert Jahnz.
The Community Executive, which has tried unsuccessfully in recent weeks to get Warsaw to allow community experts to travel to the area, strongly criticizes Minsk’s “abuse” of migration but also recalls the support that agencies can offer Poland European Border Control (Frontex) and Police (Europol).
In this sense, the community services explain that Frontex agents and Europol experts could assist the Polish authorities, for example, in registering undocumented persons who manage to cross the border irregularly and also speed up the processing of petitions. asylum that may be presented.
But, he adds, for European agencies to be able to deploy their equipment on the soil of a Member State it is necessary that their authorities first formally request it, something that has not happened in Poland for the moment.
“We have offered all the support,” said the Community spokesman to the press in Brussels when asked about the case, to stress that at the moment Poland has not submitted any request for the support of Frontex or Europol, so it does not have been able to reach the border.
‘The best way to manage the shared border (by the EU) is to do it with shared resources. In this sense, Frontex and Europol are prepared to assist as they have done in Lithuania or Latvia or in other Member States “, explained Jahnz, who has stressed that Brussels has” repeatedly encouraged “Warsaw to ask for such help.
