Monday 11 October 2021
Via Belarus to Germany
400 migrants stopped at the border with Poland
Again, the police recorded an increase in illegal crossings on the German-Polish border. Some of the migrants come from Iraq and Syria. This time there are almost 400 people who are caught within a few days. Officials and soldiers are also intervening on Poland’s border with Belarus.
The Federal Police reports a further increase in the unauthorized entry of people from Iraq, Syria and other countries into Germany via Belarus. In Brandenburg alone, 392 newcomers were picked up on the weekend in the German-Polish border area – a new high, said the Federal Police Directorate in Berlin. A week earlier it was 251.
A total of 2603 unauthorized persons had entered the area of the directorate between the beginning of the year and Sunday evening, 810 of them in the week from October 4th to October 10th. The people came primarily from Iraq as well as from Syria, Iran and Yemen. They come from Belarus via Lithuania and Poland.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko had declared that he would no longer stop refugees en route to the European Union. Since then there have been increasing reports of attempted border crossings from Belarus to Poland and Lithuania. According to the Federal Police, some of the people are brought from there to Germany by smugglers.
Poland’s border guards stop migrants
According to the federal police, officials discovered 44 unauthorized entries within a short time on Sunday alone: at 7.50 a.m., 16 Yemeni and three Syrian men in a forest near Coschen (Oder-Spree district) and an hour later another 25 Iraqis on a side road between Klein Gastrose (Spree district -Neiße) and Gubinek (Poland). The people did not have the necessary papers to legally stay in Germany and were taken into custody.
Meanwhile, according to the Polish border guards, two large groups of migrants tried to enter the EU country by force on Poland’s border with Belarus. Accordingly, groups of 90 and 130 people set out on the weekend to illegally enter Polish territory. This was only prevented by the rapid intervention of border guards and soldiers of the Polish army, said border guard spokeswoman Anna Michalska of the PAP news agency in Warsaw. The agency posted a video of the incident on Twitter.
According to Michalska, the Polish border guards registered more than 2000 attempts at illegal crossing on the border with Belarus at the weekend. On Saturday alone there were a record number of more than 700 attempts – more than ever before. Therefore, more soldiers are to be sent to the border to support them. “We are in contact with the Ministry of Defense,” said Michalska. 2500 soldiers are currently deployed at the border.