Tuesday, November 23, 2021
Poland reports repatriation
Hundreds of migrants are leaving Minsk
Thousands of refugees are trying to enter the EU from Belarus via Poland. The Belarusian ruler Lukashenko is supposed to smuggle them to Minsk. Now he is planning flights for their repatriation. However, there can be no talk of a de-escalation of the situation.
According to Polish government sources, Belarus is said to have flown hundreds of refugees from the Middle East back to their home countries. After at least one flight last week, another plane with 118 migrants on board took off from Minsk on Monday, said Stanislaw Zaryn, spokesman for the coordinator of the Polish secret services, according to the PAP news agency. More flights are planned for this week.
“But that is no proof that the Lukashenko regime is moving away from its strategic plan,” Zaryn emphasized to the Polish television broadcaster TVP Info, which is close to the government. It would be premature to see the repatriations as a step towards de-escalation on the part of the Belarusian ruler Alexander Lukashenko. At the same time, there are signs that other migrants are being brought to the border with Poland. Their attempts to break through the border are becoming “more and more aggressive”. For weeks, thousands of migrants have been trying to get from Belarus across the borders of Poland or the Baltic states into the EU.
The Polish government and the EU are accusing the Belarusian ruler, Alexander Lukashenko, of targeting people from crisis regions in order to smuggle them into the EU. An independent review of the situation at the border is also difficult because Poland had a state of emergency over 183 border communities at the beginning of September. Neither journalists nor human rights organizations are allowed to enter the exclusion zone, in which several refugees have already died under circumstances that have not been clearly clarified.