Tag Archives: Poland

Poland’s push-back policy leaves migrants facing an uncertain future as winter looms

By Joanna Plucinska and Kacper Pempel

Near SIEMIANOWKA, Poland (Reuters) – Somali migrant Abdi Fitah’s bid to cross into Poland from Belarus ended with him barefoot and freezing after he lost his shoes in a river and wandered for days in the woods along the border.

The 23-year-old is one of thousands of people, including children, from the Middle East, Africa and Afghanistan who have tried to enter Poland from Belarus in recent weeks, with charities saying they face harrowing conditions on the border.

Jakub Sieczko, a medical doctor and coordinator of the Medycy na Granicy (Medics on the Border) aid group, said he feared there would be more deaths as temperatures drop.

“There are more and more people who are hungry and dehydrated…The conditions are getting worse,” Sieczko told Reuters, adding that many migrants are from warm countries and unprepared for the cold.

Ibrahim, who said he left Somalia 15 days ago, thought he was having a heart attack while walking through the woods with a group of fellow migrants, before receiving medical help for hypothermia at the border.

“The conditions are very cold, (we’re) not wearing shoes,” he said, explaining how he lost his shoes in the river. “The leg is a big problem. I’m not wearing (enough) clothes…(or) shoes.”

He crossed the border with six other Somalis. Three of them ended up in an ambulance due to their health problems, which included a sprained ankle and symptoms of hypothermia.

Four were driven off in a border guard truck. It’s unclear if they went to a detention center or were pushed back to the border.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has said Poland is in breach of international law in its efforts to force migrants back into Belarus instead of offering them asylum.

Poland says it is respecting its international obligations while trying to stem the flow of migrants who, it says, often do not want asylum in Poland but rather in western Europe.

The European Union accuses Belarus of orchestrating the flow to put pressure on the bloc in retaliation for sanctions slapped on Minsk over human rights abuses.

MORE AND MORE MIGRANTS

Polish authorities say more than 15,000 attempts to cross the border have been made since early August, mostly by Iraqi, Afghan and Syrian nationals. The attempts have become more frequent and now exceed 500 a day.

Under EU rules, migrants should in principle apply for asylum in the first country they enter, but the bloc is planning reforms to ensure asylum obligations are more evenly spread.

Franek Sterczewski, a Polish parliamentary deputy with leading opposition group Civic Coalition, said more migrants were being turned back by border guards into the woods.

“(The Somali migrants) were sent back to the border seven times,” he said. “They’ve been wandering the forest for weeks, the temperature at night is around zero degrees, it’s raining and it’s very cold. Pushing them back will put their health and life at risk.”

(Reporting by Joanna Plucinska and Kacper Pempel; Writing by Michael Kahn; Editing by Mike Harrison)

Four dead as hurricane-force winds batter Poland

WARSAW (Reuters) – Four people were killed and 18 injured in a storm that battered Poland with hurricane-force winds on Thursday night, authorities said, damaging properties and felling trees across western and central areas of the country.

Fire services reported more than 10,000 incidents and 930 buildings were damaged, private broadcaster TVN24 reported, with the western region of Lubuskie and the central Lodzkie region hardest hit.

“The storm was terrible, it broke the sheet metal and took it from one part of the roof to the other side of the house,” Krzysztof Kolczynski, whose house in the village of Maszkowice in central Poland was damaged in the storm, told TVN24.

“It’s good that there were chimneys, otherwise it would have torn off the entire roof.”

In the south-western city of Wroclaw, police said that two people were killed when a tree fell on their car.

“Wroclaw police received a report about a tree that fell on a moving vehicle,” said police officer Pawel Noga. “Unfortunately, it was confirmed on the spot that two people in the car were killed in the incident.”

The Polish meteorological office issued fresh storm warnings for Friday evening, with the north of the country expected to face the strongest winds.

(Writing by Alan Charlish; Editing by Alex Richardson)

Night crossings: Germany braces as Belarus route swells migrant flows

By Thomas Escritt

EISENHUETTENSTADT, Germany (Reuters) – Zhina ran in the dead of night through a forest near the Belarusian-Polish border. Crucifix clenched in her pocket, she slipped with her mother and younger sister through a hole cut in the wire fence by men she believed were Belarusian police.

Last week, the 17-year-old from Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan arrived at a rapidly swelling refugee camp in eastern Germany, a few km (miles) from the Polish frontier. She was one of more than 100 refugees arriving each day as news of the Belarus corridor to Europe spreads around the Middle East.

Authorities in Brandenburg, the eastern German state that is housing most of the new arrivals, are calling for tougher action against what they see as Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko’s hybrid war against the European Union – allowing migrants to filter through Belarusian borders into Poland or neighboring Baltic states in retaliation for EU sanctions.

“We are just managing the symptoms here,” said Michael Stuebgen, Brandenburg’s interior minister. “The actual problem is the people smuggling organized by the Belarus regime.”

All Iraqis now know about the Belarusian route to the EU, said Zhina’s mother Nihaya, who paid traffickers $15,000 to arrange the journey for herself and her daughters.

Facing crippling sanctions over his violent crackdown on protests over his disputed re-election victory last year, Lukashenko has opened his country’s borders to much of the Middle East and Africa, knowing that many will use the opportunity to pass through into the EU, starting with Poland.

In August, Stuebgen said, 200 arrived from Belarus at the camp in Eisenhuettenstadt, on Germany’s border with Poland. Now, 100-150 are arriving daily. Many are in a bad way – of 120 who arrived on Wednesday, seven tested positive for COVID-19.

Poland and Lithuania have erected fences along their border with Belarus, but few refugees want to stop in either country.

DESTINATION: GERMANY VIA POLAND

Under EU asylum rules, they have to stay in the first EU country they are registered in – so refugees wanting to live in affluent Germany – the most desirable destination for many EU-bound migrants – to dodge the authorities on the way there.

“Everything happened after midnight: it was too dangerous during the day,” said Zhina, describing how men, whom she believed to be Belarusian policemen, had trucked her and dozens of other migrants to the border and cut a hole through the fence to let them into Poland.

The three sneaked through forest on the Polish side of the border, dodging border guards flashing torches, hitching rides or getting driven by smugglers across Poland, thereby avoiding registration there, before reaching Germany.

The crucifix, a gift from her mother, was safely stowed in her pocket out of fear its chain would snag on a branch.

Her mother dreams of settling in Hamburg, where Zhina wants to study engineering at university. If successful, she and her 12-year-old sister Zhino will join the million or so migrants who settled in Germany in 2015, many of whom are now thriving.

But Brandenburg, which has the headache of settling the hundreds of new arrivals in a former police barracks that it has tripled in size with the aid of heated tents, is calling for firmer action from the German government and the EU.

Stuebgen called for “a landing ban in all of Europe for all airlines that contribute to this human trafficking” – which could include Belarus’s Belavia, which flew Zhina from Istanbul to Minsk, but also Gulf airlines, officials said.

(Reporting by Thomas Escritt; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Poland refuses to halt disputed coal mine despite EU court penalty

By Foo Yun Chee and Anna Koper

BRUSSELS/WARSAW (Reuters) -Poland vowed to keep its disputed Turow coal mine running on Monday despite being hit with a order to pay a 500,000 euro ($585,550) daily penalty to the European Commission for defying an earlier court ruling to halt operations.

Europe’s top court, the Luxembourg-based Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), ordered the penalty on Monday.

It followed a request from the Czech Republic, which is locked in a dragging dispute with Poland over the Turow open-pit mine that sits next to their shared border. The Czech government says the mine is damaging its communities.

The mine, which produces lignite, or brown coal, has been operating for more than a century, but has recently expanded further towards the Czech border.

The penalty order could pressure Warsaw to seek a resolution with Prague after bilateral talks started in June over technical upgrades and measures to limit damage to water levels and noise and air conditions. A deal should end any legal disputes.

The Polish government said the EU court’s penalty on Monday undermined those talks, and said Turow, a major source of jobs and electricity in its region, would continue operations.

“The fine mentioned by the Court of Justice of the European Union is disproportionate to the situation and is not justified by facts,” Poland’s government said in a statement.

“It undermines the ongoing process of reaching an amicable settlement.”

The court’s order comes amid other disputes Warsaw faces with the European Union, largely over the rule of law.

The Czech Republic has taken its grievance over Turow to the Commission, which last year started legal proceedings, saying Warsaw had breached EU law when extending the mine’s life.

The country also took its case to the CJEU, and won judges’ backing for a temporary order to stop Turow’s operations until a final judgment.

“JUDICIAL ROBBERY”

When Warsaw rejected a halt, Prague asked for a daily penalty payment of 5 million euros to be levied.

The court on Monday agreed but set the fine much lower.

“Such a measure appears necessary in order to strengthen the effectiveness of the interim measures decided upon in the order of 21 May 2021 and to deter that member state from delaying bringing its conduct into line with that order,” judges said.

Prague welcomed the penalty but said it still wanted to reach an agreement in an amicable way.

Some Polish officials strongly rejected the order.

“The CJEU demands half a million daily fines from Poland for the fact that Poland did not leave its citizens without energy and did not close the mines overnight,” deputy justice minister Marcin Romanowski said on Twitter.

“It is judicial robbery and theft in broad daylight. You won’t get a cent.”

($1 = 0.8539 euros)

(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee in Brussels and Anna Koper in Warsaw; additional reporting by Anna Wlodarczak-Semczuk in Warsaw and Jason Hovet in Prague; Writing by Jason Hovet; Editing by Mark Porter and Jan Harvey)

Poland declares state of emergency on Belarus border

WARSAW (Reuters) -Poland’s president has declared a state of emergency in parts of two regions bordering Belarus, his spokesman said on Thursday, an unprecedented move in the country’s post-communist history that follows a surge in illegal migration.

The European Union has accused Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko of using migrants from countries like Iraq and Afghanistan as part of a “hybrid war” designed to put pressure on the bloc over sanctions it has imposed on Minsk.

Poland has been trying to improve security along its frontier by building a fence and deploying troops.

“The situation on the border with Belarus is difficult and dangerous,” presidential spokesman Blazej Spychalski told a news conference. “Today, we as Poland, being responsible for our own borders, but also for the borders of the European Union, must take measures to ensure the security of Poland and the (EU).”

The Polish Border Guard said on Wednesday there had been around 3,500 attempts to illegally cross the border in August alone, 2,500 of which it had managed to thwart.

The government has also said it needs to be prepared for “provocations” that could transpire during military exercises organized by the Russian army that will be held on Russian and Belarusian territory near Poland from Sept. 10.

The “West-2021” drills will involve thousands of servicemen, including those from Kazakhstan, a member of the Moscow-led defense bloc, as well as tanks, artillery and aircraft.

“The second reason for bringing in the state of emergency in this area is the military exercises…that will take place on our border,” Polish Interior Minister Mariusz Kaminski said. “We must be prepared for every scenario.”

The state of emergency, which will restrict the movement of people and ban mass gatherings, is to apply to a 3-km-(1.9-mile)-deep swathe along the border for 30 days.

NGOs have sharply criticized the government’s approach to the issue and have said Warsaw must provide more humanitarian aid to migrants stranded on the border.

“This state of emergency is a nuclear solution that is to move us away from this border, not only us but also the media, and make sure that no one…will document what is happening there,” said Marianna Wartecka of the Ocalenie Foundation refugee charity.

Poland says the migrants are the responsibility of Belarus and it has also accused Minsk of refusing a convoy of humanitarian aid meant for them.

(Reporting by Alan Charlish, Pawel Florkiewicz, Alicja Ptak and Anna Koper; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

UN refugee agency presses Poland to help migrants on Belarus border

WARSAW (Reuters) -The U.N. refugee agency UNHCR and rights groups urged Poland on Tuesday to offer medical and legal support and shelter to migrants camping on the border with Belarus, a day after Warsaw said it would build a fence to prevent migrants crossing.

Poland and fellow EU states Lithuania and Latvia have reported sharp increases in migrants from countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan trying to cross their frontiers. The EU says Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko is waging “hybrid warfare” with migrants to exert pressure on the bloc.

“While we acknowledge the challenges posed by recent arrivals to Poland, we call on the Polish authorities to provide access to territory, immediate medical assistance, legal advice, and psychosocial support to these people,” said Christine Goyer, the UNHCR’s representative in Poland.

On Monday, Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak said that a new 2.5-metre-(8.2-foot)-high solid fence would be built along the border with Belarus.

“States have the legitimate right to manage their borders in accordance with international law. However, they must also respect human rights, including the right to seek asylum,” the UNHCR said in a statement.

Poland’s Foreign Ministry said it fully applies provisions of national and international law with respect to asylum.

“Poland fully respects the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and complies with its provisions in the current situation. At the same time, we expect that Belarus, as a party to the Convention, to fulfill its obligations and will provide appropriate care to people in its territory,” a ministry statement said.

The Helsinki Committee for Human Rights said on Tuesday it has requested the European Court of Human Rights take temporary measures to ensure Poland ensures the migrants’ safety, and offer them food, water and shelter at a refugee center.

The Polish Human Rights Ombudsman said Poland’s Border Guard had violated the Geneva Convention by not accepting verbal declarations from some of the migrants that they wanted to apply for international protection in Poland.

(Reporting by Joanna Plucinska; Additional reporting by Anna Koper; Editing by Steve Orlofsky and Mark Heinrich)

Poland, Lithuania call for EU help with migration surge at Belarusian border

WARSAW (Reuters) – Poland and Lithuania on Friday called on European institutions to help them deal with a surge in illegal migration from Belarus over their borders, as tensions between EU countries and Minsk continues to grow.

On Thursday Poland accused Belarus of sending a growing number of migrants over the border in retaliation for Warsaw’s decision this week to give refuge to Krystsina Tsimanouskaya, a Belarusian athlete who refused to return home from the Tokyo Olympics.

“We condemn the weaponization of irregular migration by the Lukashenko regime with a goal of exerting political pressure on the EU and its individual Member States,” Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Simonytr said in a joint statement.

In the past two days alone 133 illegal migrants were stopped at the Belarusian border with Poland, compared to 122 during the whole of last year, a spokesperson for the Poland Border Guard said.

In recent weeks, Lithuania has also reported a surge in illegal border crossings from Belarus and said Minsk was flying in migrants from abroad and dispatching them into the EU.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko on Thursday accused Lithuania and Poland of fueling the migrant issue on the border.

In the statement, Poland and Lithuania appealed to the European Commission, Frontex, EASO, other EU member states, and partners outside the EU for political and practical support and called to strengthen EU migration and asylum policy.

“We firmly believe that the protection of external Schengen borders is not just the duty of individual member states but also the common responsibility of the EU,” the statement says.

European Union home affairs ministers and representatives of the EU border agency Frontex and Europol are set to discuss the issue on Aug. 18, a letter by Slovenia to EU diplomats seen by Reuters showed.

(Reporting by Alicja Ptak and Anna Wlodarczak-semczuk; Editing by Angus MacSwan and Raissa Kasolowsky)

Poland says Belarus lets migrants cross border in ‘hybrid war’ with EU

WARSAW (Reuters) -Poland accused Belarus of sending a growing number of migrants over the border in retaliation for Warsaw’s decision this week to give refuge to Krystsina Tsimanouskaya, a Belarusian athlete who refused to return home from the Tokyo Olympics.

A deputy interior minister, Maciej Wasik, said on Thursday that Minsk was “waging a hybrid war with the European Union with the help of illegal immigrants.”

In recent weeks, neighbor and fellow EU member state Lithuania has reported a surge in illegal border crossings from Belarus and said Minsk was flying in migrants from abroad and dispatching them into the EU.

“There are both young men and women with children. Belarus is using these immigrants as a living weapon,” Wasik told online broadcaster Telewizja wPolsce.

“In recent days we have seen an increase (in migrants). We treat it as a reaction to the granting of asylum to the Belarusian sprinter.”

Tsimanouskaya’s Cold War-style defection has ratcheted up Western tensions with Minsk at a time when the EU has accused President Alexander Lukashenko of using migrants to hit back against EU sanctions.

Officials in the Belarusian government could not immediately be reached for comment.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko on Thursday accused Lithuania and Poland of fueling the migrant issue on the border, saying Lithuania wanted to drive migrants into Belarusian territory by force.

Belarus in May decided to let migrants enter Lithuania in retaliation for EU sanctions meted out after Minsk forced a Ryanair flight to land on its soil and arrested a dissident blogger who was on board.

Lukashenko at the time said Belarus would not become a “holding site” for migrants from Africa and the Middle East.

The Polish Border Guard told Reuters it had detained a group of 71 migrants on the border with Belarus during the night from Wednesday to Thursday and another group of 62, mostly Iraqis, on Wednesday.

That is more that the total of 122 illegal migrants the Border Guard said were detained along the frontier in the whole of last year. Last month, 242 migrants were intercepted.

Wasik said migrants arriving recently had mainly been from Iraq but also from Afghanistan.

The interior ministry did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment.

The EU has summoned the Belarusian envoy in Brussels and held talks with the Iraqi government over the issue of illegal migration to the bloc.

(Reporting by Anna Wlodarczak-Semczuk and Agnieszka Barteczko in Warsaw, Matthias Williams in London, writing by Alan Charlish, Editing by William Maclean, Mark Heinrich and Steve Orlofsky)

Poland tightens quarantine rules after cases of Indian COVID-19 variant

WARSAW (Reuters) – People travelling to Poland from Brazil, India and South Africa will have to quarantine, the Polish health minister said on Tuesday, as he announced cases of a COVID-19 variant first detected in India in the Warsaw and Katowice areas.

The outbreaks poses a fresh risk to Poland just as it starts to emerge from a highly damaging third wave of the pandemic.

“In the case of Brazil, India and South Africa, people travelling from these locations will automatically have to quarantine without the possibility of getting an exception due to a test,” Health Minister Adam Niedzielski told a news conference.

The number of infections involving the Indian variant in Poland has now reached 16, including two cases in the family of a Polish diplomat who had returned from India, Niedzielski said.

Poland has so far reported 2,808,052 cases of COVID-19 and 68,133 deaths.

Poland reopened shopping centers on Tuesday, the beginning of a gradual unfreezing of the economy that will see restaurants, hotels and schools reopening at different points in May.

(Reporting by Alan Charlish and Pawel Florkiewicz; Editing by Gareth Jones)

‘You can’t clone us’: Polish doctors cry for help as COVID deaths spike

By Joanna Plucinska and Alicja Ptak

KRAKOW, Poland (Reuters) – When the pandemic began last year, Kinga Szlachcic-Wyroba, an anesthesiologist in the Stefan Zeromski Specialist Hospital in Krakow, Poland, had to manage one COVID-19 patient and 10 others in intensive care with three other doctors.

Now the third wave has hit Poland and the number of COVID-19 patients in intensive care stands at 17, with just four non-COVID sufferers. Around 80% of the COVID patients are expected to die.

Szlachcic-Wyroba, however, is still working with only three other doctors.

“We are physically doing our best but we are frequently unable to secure the care that we would like to provide,” she said in the ward’s break room for staff, lined with couches and a stray sleeping bag, adding that when on shift they often can’t even take a break to sit down.

As COVID-related deaths in Poland surpass 800 a day and the country hits a European record for excess deaths, epidemiologists have pointed to a major medical personnel shortage as one of the culprits.

Szlachcic-Wyroba is exhausted from 24-hour shifts and comforting patients’ families, adding that the flood of critically ill patients in recent weeks surpassed “even my worst dreams”.

Across Poland, doctors have complained about long lines of ambulances at hospitals or rescheduled non-COVID surgeries for life-threatening illnesses.

“The country was unprepared for this scale of an epidemic… There are no beds, no personnel, simply no reserves,” said professor Krzysztof Simon, a regional epidemiology consultant from Lower Silesia.

According to Eurostat, Poland had only 2.4 doctors and 5.1 nurses per 1,000 citizens in 2017, among the lowest in the EU, even before the pandemic.

Many doctors have gone abroad in search of better pay, with health spending not enough to attract or retain staff.

“The healthcare system is now at its limit but it has been at this limit basically for as long as I can remember. The epidemic has just multiplied all of its shortcomings,” said Piotr Meryk, head doctor at the Zeromski hospital’s COVID ward.

That means deaths have spiked this year, doctors say, as COVID patients are reluctant to go to hospital, fearing poor conditions and patients suffering from other serious illnesses are neglected by specialists relocated to COVID wards.

After Brazil, Poland had the second highest cumulative number of confirmed deaths in the world the week of April 13, according to Our World in Data.

SOLUTIONS?

The government has promised to address the issue, but staff are hard to find despite efforts to recruit medical students and Ukrainian doctors.

“You can buy equipment, build temporary hospitals, produce more beds, but personnel is the element that is creating a bottleneck,” Health Minister Adam Niedzielski said in February.

In a statement to Reuters, the ministry said it had taken legislative steps in recent years to recruit more nurses and doctors.

But as patients flood wards, Meryk said these steps were not enough, and he urged the government to prepare for future pandemics.

“You can’t just make these doctors appear or clone them.”