A Polish refugee rights group said Friday that 32 people who fled Afghanistan have been trapped for 12 days in an area between Poland and Belarus while caught up in a standoff between the two countries.
Belarus is making all sorts of friends with this nonsense.
The group, Fundacja Ocalenie, called on Polish authorities to allow the people to apply for refugee status in Poland, saying they have the right to do so. Polish authorities are refusing to let them in, and Belarusian guards will not let them return.``In accordance with the law in force in Poland, each of these people should be allowed to submit an application for protection,'' Piotr Bystrianin, the president of the group's management board, said in a statement.
Poland and the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia accuse Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko of sending
...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing...'s external border, and the countries believe Lukashenko is acting in Dire Revenge for sanctions the EU imposed over his disputed reelection and crackdown on dissent.
Most of the recent
Poland has deployed hundreds of soldiers to the border and is reinforcing it with barbed wire. Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said Thursday that he sympathized with the
Fundacja Ocalenie said it arrived at the spot where the
Tahmina Rajabova, a member of the foundation, reported speaking to the
A few days earlier, about a dozen people from Iraq _ women and small children _ were stranded with them, but Belarusian authorities allowed them back into Belarus, Rajabova said.
``It is an inhumane and scandalous situation that Poland, together with Belarus, condemns these people to imprisonment on the border, in conditions that offend human dignity and are life-threatening,'' said Maciej Konieczny, a left-wing Polish politician who joined the humanitarian workers at the border.
Lawyers with the foundation plan to submit applications for protection on behalf of the