2024-06-03 21:28 update: 2024-06-04, 14:46
Photo PAP/Szymon Pulcyn
The Polish foreign minister has announced an information campaign aimed at the countries of origin of migrants attempting to unlawfully enter Poland from Belarus.
"An information campaign, which will be based on data collected by the Border Guard and soldiers protecting the Polish border with Belarus, will be addressed at the countries from which migrants trying to illegally cross the Polish border from Belarus come from," Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said in Bialystok, north-eastern Poland, on Monday.
According to Sikorski, the campaign is planned to discourage migrants from illegally crossing the Polish border.
The minister explained that, while preparing the campaign, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs would use materials collected by the interior ministry and the armed forces "in order to inform foreign countries about what has been going on at the Polish-Belarusian frontier."
Sikorski said that the point was to avoid a situation in which illegal migrants were cheated by Russians and Belarusians. According to the minister, 90 percent of all the detained illegal migrants had a Russian visa, while Belarus had lifted visa requirements for citizens of some countries.
"This has been taking place to encourage these poor people, in countries with a migration threat, to try their luck. They are being misled as they cannot come here just because they want to," Sikorski said.
He stated that the point was also to show that the border was being protected and expressed hope that this would convince these people not to endanger their lives and not to place themselves in the hands of KGB and GRU human traffickers.
Sikorski said that film recordings from the border, planned as part of the campaign, should be enough to convince potential illegal migrants that it was not easy today to cross the Polish border.
In 2021, Belarusian strongman Alexander Lukashenko, in retaliation for EU sanctions imposed on Minsk, started inviting migrants to Belarus under a false promise of easy access to the EU across the Polish and Lithuanian borders as part of his plan to destabilise the bloc.
In response, Poland has built a border fence to stem the inflow of irregular migrants from Belarus, but despite it being fitted with advanced electronic surveillance equipment, some illegal migrants are said to be crossing the barrier every month. (PAP)
at/jch
