WARSAW, Poland (AP) – Poland plans to build a fence along the border with Belarus and deploy more troops there to stop migrants who want to enter the European Union nation.
The government also offered on Monday to send humanitarian aid to a group of immigrants trapped at the border for more than two weeks.
Poland and the three Baltic states – Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia – accuse Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko of sending migrants to its borders, which are also part of the EU’s eastern border, in what they call a “hybrid war”. Migrants are mostly from Afghanistan and Iraq.
The four EU nations believe the increase in migrants is Minsk’s revenge for EU sanctions against the autocratic regime in Belarus.
“The use of immigrants to destabilize neighboring countries is a clear breach of international law and is described as a hybrid attack against … Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and therefore against the entire European Union,” he said. Monday in a joint statement.
From Geneva, UN Refugee Agency spokeswoman Shabia Mantoo said the organization has been closely monitoring the situation.
“We have been very concerned about the evolution of borders that has caused people to be trapped for days,” Mantoo said.
The Polish government said last week that 2,100 migrants had tried to enter Poland illegally from Belarus until August. Nearly 800 of them entered and have been located in administrative centers.
In response to the arrival of migrants, Poland said it had deployed more than 900 troops on the border with Belarus and that it was strengthening the border with 150 kilometers (93 miles) of barbed wire. On Monday, Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak said more soldiers would be sent and a 2.5-meter-high fence would be erected at the border.
Blaszczak said the new border fence would be modeled on the one Hungary erected against immigrants years ago on the border with Serbia, which is reinforced with coils of wire.
“We are facing an attack on Poland. It is an attempt to trigger a migration crisis, “he told a news conference at the border.
Noting that the Lukashenko regime has ties to the Kremlin, Blaszczak said: “We will not allow the creation of a route for the transfer of migrants through Poland to the European Union.”
Meanwhile, political tensions are growing in Poland over more than 30 migrants who were trapped on the border with Belarus. A refugee rights group says the group includes people from Afghanistan and some people in need of medical care. Poland insists they are in Belarusian territory, but has still been criticized for not allowing migrants to seek asylum.
On Monday, the Polish Foreign Ministry said it presented a diplomatic note to Belarus to provide food and medicine for the group, as well as tents, beds, sleeping bags, blankets and pajamas.
Lukashenko, who had reached an agreement with the EU to curb illegal migration in response to Western sanctions, later attacked Polish authorities on Monday for using force to push immigrants into Belarus.
“They took 50 people heading to Germany … and pushed them to the border with Belarus by firing shots into the air,” Lukashenko said.
In Warsaw, about two dozen protesters chained themselves to a fence in front of the headquarters of the border guards and put barbed wire on their doors to protest the behavior of the Polish authorities along the border.
Deputy Foreign Minister Pawel Jablonski said the border situation was checking how the country would react to more serious acts of hybrid warfare.
“The statements and behavior of a significant number of politicians, journalists and activists of Polish NGOs show that a scenario in which a foreign country carrying out this attack on Poland will receive the support of allies of our country is very real,” Jablonski said on Twitter.
He said authorities should use this situation to “better prepare for similar threatening actions in the future.”
Lithuania has seen similar tensions triggered by an increase in migrants on its border.
“Lukashenko is not only using migrants as a hybrid weapon to take revenge on the West, but is trying to provoke a division and internal political crisis in Poland and Lithuania,” said independent Belarusian political analyst Valery Karbalevich. “Lukashenko is playing a dangerous game, trying to test the limits of Western patience.”
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Jamey Keaten in Geneva and Yuras Karmanau in Kiev, Ukraine, contributed to this report.
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