According to the UN, Belarus and Poland are denying the world organization access to the border region to get acquainted with the situation of migrants who have found themselves there. Liz Throssell, spokeswoman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), said on Tuesday December 21 in Geneva that although the UN expert team was able to travel to Poland, its staff were denied access to refugees in the border zone. Belarus refused to let them into its territory at all.
Liz Throssell insists that both countries “urgently resolve this dire situation in accordance with their obligations” under international human rights and refugee law.
Migrants complain about Belarusian security officials
Referring to conversations with several dozen migrants who arrived in the border region from August to November, an OHCHR spokeswoman said the refugees were in a “catastrophic” situation on both sides of the border. According to their stories, they do not have enough food, clean water, often there is no roof over their heads, moreover, in cold conditions. On the Belarusian territory, migrants, according to them, were subjected to “beatings and threats from the security forces”, they extorted money for food and water.
“We call on Belarus to fully investigate these alarming reports of violence and ill-treatment and to put an immediate end to such practices,” said Liz Trossell.
Poland is invited to revise legislation
In turn, the OHCHR called on Warsaw to revise the current legislation, which provides for the immediate expulsion of people who entered Poland. Instead, it is proposed to individually assess people’s need for protection in accordance with the provisions of international law on the prohibition of refoulement and collective expulsion.
Due to the influx of migrants from Belarus, Poland has deployed tens of thousands of soldiers on the border. Since the beginning of the year, thousands of migrants – many of them from the Middle East – have arrived via Belarus at the external borders of the EU, trying to move to Poland or the Baltic countries.
The EU accuses the authoritarian Belarusian ruler Alexander Lukashenko of deliberately bringing migrants from crisis regions to Belarus in order to transport them to the EU and thereby destabilize the situation in Europe. Minsk denies these charges.
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