(Reuters) Surrounded by lush forests, a dozen people huddled near a razor-tipped fence along the Belarus border, waiting for a chance to scale it or push aside its slats to head west into Poland. On the other side, armed Polish border guards […]
(Notes from Poland) Police officers serving on the border with Belarus have been ordered to carry firearms due to “growing aggression” from migrants. There have recently been several attacks on Polish officers and yesterday a soldier died after being stabbed while attempting […]
(Notes from Poland) Politicians from both the government and opposition have reacted angrily after news emerged that three soldiers were detained by military police for firing warning shots at a group of migrants trying to force their way across the border from […]
(Politico) A Polish soldier has died after being stabbed by a migrant on the country’s border with Belarus, Warsaw’s military said Thursday. The soldier was involved in a clash with migrants attempting to cross Poland’s northeast border from Belarus on May 28, […]
(AP) A Somali woman pushes her bandaged hand between two vertical bars of a thick metal barrier separating Belarus from Poland as she and four other women gaze toward the European Union. They nod gratefully as a Polish humanitarian aid worker calls […]
(AP) Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Wednesday that its forces would further fortify the border with Belarus and can use “all available means” to defend the NATO nation’s frontier, after a soldier was seriously wounded with a knife by a migrant. […]
(TVP) A migrant attempting to illegally cross the border from Belarus into Poland stabbed a Polish soldier on Tuesday, the deputy interior minister reported. The soldier was immediately taken to the hospital and is in stable condition. The attack occurred during a […]
(AFP) Poland has dismantled an alleged migrant trafficking network at the Polish-Belarusian border which was suspected of providing millions of dollars in financing to armed groups like Hezbollah, prosecutors said Tuesday. Thirty-six Polish, Ukrainian, Iraqi and Belarusian members of the alleged network […]
(AFP) Polish security services said Tuesday they had deported a Tajikistan citizen on suspicion of “terrorist activities” and links to the Islamic State group that claimed a deadly attack in Moscow last month. The man, whose identity was not disclosed, was “a […]
(Charter 97) Police have detained a 38-year-old woman who planned to carry out a terrorist attack and planted an improvised explosive device in the center of Warsaw on Independence Day, celebrated on November 11. The detainee was interested in the Islamic State […]
(Reuters) Islamic militants will be among migrants heading for Europe as a result of the conflict in Israel, Poland’s prime minister said on Thursday, as his governing party burnishes its anti-immigrant credentials in the run-up to a national election. The nationalist Law […]
(Middle East Eye) Muslim civil society groups from Europe warned of the growing level of Islamophobia spreading across the continent at a major security and human rights conference in Poland. On Thursday, seven Muslim groups from Austria, France, Sweden, Spain, and the […]
(Middle East Eye) The director of the UK-based advocacy group Cage has accused the French government of placing him on a European no-entry list after he was refused entry to Poland to attend a high-profile security conference in Warsaw. Border officers at […]
(AP) Germany announced Wednesday it will increase police patrols along “smuggling routes” on the border with Poland and the Czech Republic in an effort to prevent more migrants from entering the country. The new measures would begin immediately, said Interior Minister Nancy […]
(Reuters) The European Union should deal with a surge in migrants by sealing its borders and rejecting any idea of relocating them within the bloc, Poland’s ruling party said on Tuesday as it takes a tough stance on migration before an election. […]
(AP) Poland’s government said Monday it wants to ask voters whether they want dismantled a recently-built border wall that blocks unauthorized migration from Belarus. The loaded question is one of four the right-wing ruling party wants to ask in a referendum it […]
(AP) Poland’s ruling party wants to ask voters in a referendum whether they support accepting “thousands of illegal immigrants from the Middle East and Africa” as part of a European Union relocation plan, the prime minister said Sunday, as his conservative party […]
(AFP) Poland’s government on Monday accused Belarus and Russia of orchestrating another migration influx into the European Union via the Polish border in order to destabilise the region. “We’re talking about an operation organised by the Russian and Belarusian secret services that […]
(Reuters) An 18-year-old Polish man has been arrested and charged with plotting with Islamist militants to bomb a government building, the internal security agency said on Friday. The young man was arrested in southern Poland in June and had collected information and […]
(AP) Poland’s lawmakers on Friday approved law amendments that open the way for a national referendum on accepting migrants to be held in conjunction with the country’s general election, which is expected this fall. Poland’s conservative government has vetoed the European Union’s […]
(AP) The European Union should put a priority on stopping illegal migration instead of trying to persuade the 27 member nations to share responsibility for people who arrive without authorization, the prime ministers of Italy and Poland said Wednesday. Italy’s right-wing leader, […]
(Reuters) Poland and Hungary refused on Friday to sign up to conclusions of a European Union summit over two paragraphs on migration, a move diplomat[s] said aimed to demonstrate their anger over being outvoted earlier this month on new migration rules. The […]
(Reuters) Poland will demand the reform of the European Union’s border agency Frontex and more funds for dealing with migrants, the prime minister said on Thursday, as he prepared to oppose a migration deal at an EU summit in Brussels. Under the […]
(AP) Belarus is introducing a visa-free travel arrangement with dozens of countries for a month, raising fears that neighboring Poland and Lithuania might see a sudden increase in unauthorized migration. The authoritarian president of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, signed a decree allowing citizens […]
(AP) The Polish border service on Friday reported an increase in the number of Middle Eastern migrants trying to illegally cross into the European Union at the border of Belarus and Poland. In the past 24 hours, border agents detained 117 migrants […]
(Middle East Eye) Muslim civil society organisations have raised the alarm about a rising tide of state-sponsored Islamophobia in Europe at a major security and human rights conference in Poland. France, Denmark and Austria were among countries singled out over policies which […]
(AP) Polish officials on Thursday reported a change in migration patterns across the country’s border with Belarus, with Africans who first traveled to Russia making up most of those seeking to enter Poland illegally by that route instead of people from the […]
(AP) A year after migrants started crossing into the European Union from Belarus to Poland, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and top security officials visited the border area on Thursday to mark the completion of a new steel wall. On Friday, Polish […]
(AFP) Ten Kurdish asylum seekers in Poland on Friday entered their third week of a hunger strike to protest what they described as prison-like conditions and a slow immigration process. “The strike began on May 4,” said Dagmara Bielec, a spokeswoman for […]
(AFP) Poland has welcomed two million refugees from war-torn Ukraine at lightning speed and with open arms. Yet just north of that border, the EU member continues to push back those crossing from Belarus. Since last summer, thousands of migrants and refugees […]
(AFP) Polish contractors began work on Tuesday on a 353-million-euro wall along the Belarus border aimed at deterring migrant crossings following a crisis in the area last year. The 5.5-metre-high wall will run along 186 kilometres (115 miles) of the border — […]
(AP) Poland’s Border Guard authorities say that almost 600 attempts by migrants at illegally crossing the border from Belarus have been foiled so far this year. The attempts have continued since their peak in the fall, but the number of registered tries […]
(AP) Latvia, Lithuania and Poland continue to use questionable methods to keep out migrants trying to enter from Belarus and are denying access to aid groups trying to help people stuck in border areas, senior U.N. refugee agency and European Union officials […]
(Reuters) Sleeping on mattresses in a Belarusian warehouse, hundreds of Middle Eastern migrants are still clinging to the hope of a future in western Europe as the year draws to a close. The nearly 600 migrants, from countries including Iraq, Turkey, Iran […]
(AFP) Poland’s Supreme Court has ruled in favour of a Moroccan man who had been acquitted of being an accomplice of the suspected mastermind of the 2015 terror attacks in Paris. Prosecutors had appealed against the acquittal and had requested a six-and-a-half-year […]
(Reuters) Belarus on Tuesday said its security services did not aggravate the migrant situation at the border by throwing firecrackers or taking other actions as Poland claimed the previous day. The Belarus State Border Committee rejected the allegation by Polish Border Guard […]
(Reuters) Fewer migrants are trying to cross the frontier between Poland and Belarus, but the Polish Border Guard told journalists visiting the previously off-limits border zone on Monday that it still faces provocations from Belarusian forces. Reuters was among a group of […]
(AP) Top European Union migration officials offered Wednesday to ease the asylum-evaluation rules for Poland, Lithuania and Latvia in response to what the EU has called a “hybrid attack” by Belarus to destabilize the bloc using migrants and refugees. The move would […]
(AFP) Belarus’s strongman leader Alexander Lukashenko told migrants on the border with Poland Friday that he would not try to stop them from reaching the European Union, urging Germany to take them in. In footage released by state media, Lukashenko was shown […]
(AP) The leaders of three Central European countries on Tuesday expressed their solidarity with Poland in an ongoing migration crisis on its eastern border with Belarus, and urged the European Union to increase its support for the protection of the bloc’s external […]
(AP) The authoritarian leader of Belarus on Monday sharply criticized the European Union for its refusal to hold talks on the influx of migrants on the country’s border with Poland. Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko urged Germany to accommodate about 2,000 migrants who […]
(BBC) Belarus’s authoritarian leader has told the BBC it is “absolutely possible” his forces helped migrants cross into Poland but denies they were invited. Thousands of migrants, mainly from the Middle East, have been trying to get into the EU via Belarus […]
(AP) Hundreds of Iraqis returned home Thursday from Belarus after abandoning their hopes of reaching the European Union — a repatriation that came after tensions at Poland’s eastern border, where thousands of migrants became stuck in a cold and soggy forest. Many […]
(AP) Hundreds of migrants who were camped in the cold on the Poland-Belarus border have been moved to a nearby warehouse in Belarusian territory, reports said Wednesday, with some still harboring hopes of entering the European Union. The move came a day […]
(AFP) The European Union should be prepared for more migrant crises like the ones on the Greece-Turkey and Poland-Belarus borders, the head of the EU’s border agency told AFP in an interview. Frontex chief Fabrice Leggeri also said the agency was working […]
(AP) Polish forces at the border with Belarus used water cannons and tear gas Tuesday against stone-throwing migrants, as Warsaw accused Belarusian authorities of giving smoke grenades and other weapons to those trying to cross the frontier. The events marked an escalation […]
(AFP) Aryan Wali Zellmi, a 25-year-old Iraqi Kurd, had tried twice to enter the European Union through Belarus. This time, he got stuck on the freezing border with Poland, joining hundreds in a crisis that the EU blames on Minsk. Zellmi is […]
(Politico) European Council President Charles Michel turned heads Wednesday when he claimed the EU could legally fund border barriers — calling into question a long-standing EU refusal to allow such financing. “Based on an opinion of the Legal Service of the Council, […]
(AP) European Union officials on Wednesday accused Belarus of state-sponsored “trafficking” of human lives by luring desperate migrants to the Polish border — the edge of the EU — where many are now stuck in makeshift camps in freezing weather. As the […]
(AP) Poland reinforced its border with Belarus with more riot police on Tuesday, a day after groups of migrants tried to storm through a razor-wire fence on the eastern frontier where thousands have camped on the Belarusian side in the tense standoff. […]
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