Megathread – Belarusian/ Polish border migrant issue

27 comments

1. Finally a grown up has stepped in and solved this laughable shitshow. Germany takes the migrants, airlines are stopping to get more migrants to Belarus, Poland doesn’t need to have more temper tantrum because of 4,000 people.

   This whole situation was so silly.

2. Fights break out for cigarettes and food among migrants. Belarus soldiers break it off.

   https://twitter.com/TadeuszGiczan/status/1461369449806589960

3. PM of Poland and Kurdistan gov. spoke and agreed that these migrants were victims of human trafficking.

   https://twitter.com/propeertys/status/1461371133786267658

4. [Interior minister: Germany won’t admit refugees from Belarus-Polish border](https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/germany-wont-admit-refugees-belarus-polish-border-interior-minister-2021-11-18/)

5. https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/11/18/world/belarus-poland-border-migrants

   Live Updates: Belarus Clears Main Border Crossing With Poland

6. members of this sub who need something to be angry at working themselves into a frenzy over unconfirmed news that turn out to be fake, nothing new under the sun

7. *[Germany won’t admit refugees from Belarus-Polish border -interior minister](https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/germany-wont-admit-refugees-belarus-polish-border-interior-minister-2021-11-18/)*

   We’ve entered a new zeitgeist.

8. All this drama over 5k migrants on the border. It’s nothing.

   France shipped over 1000 to us in one single day last week.

9. [removed]

10. https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/bundesregierung-will-keine-gefluechteten-aus-belarus-aufnehmen-a-fa8a6fea-2ef3-474b-a643-52f104eac99b

    (Translated with Deepl)

    **German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer (CSU) has clarified that the German government has not reached an agreement with Belarus on taking in 2000 refugees. “This report is false,” the caretaker minister said in Warsaw on Thursday after a meeting with Poland’s Interior Minister Mariusz Kaminski. Hybrid threat situations are always used to spread false information among the public, he added.**

    **”And one of this false information was today that the German government would be ready to take a certain number of these refugees to Germany. There was talk of 2000,” he said, adding that he had immediately contacted Angela Merkel (CDU), the acting chancellor, and was told that this was not true.**

    Belarus had offered the European Union a compromise in view of the plight of the refugees on the border with Poland and the Baltic states. Minsk was ready to send 5000 of them back to their home countries if the EU would accept 2000 people, the news agency Belta quoted a spokeswoman of President Alexander Lukashenko as saying on Thursday. He had discussed the proposal with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

    “The European Union is creating a humanitarian corridor for the 2000 refugees who are in the camp,” Lukashenko’s spokeswoman Natalia Eismont said. “We are committed to facilitating the return of the remaining 5000 – as far as possible and desired – to their home country.”

    **Seehofer, meanwhile, praised Poland’s efforts to ward off organised migration movements from Belarus. “What Poland is doing in this migration crisis is right and is legitimate.” He said it was about irregular migration organised in a perfidious manner from Belarus and supported with a certain probability by Russia. “What Poland is doing here in terms of external border protection serves everyone in the European Union and especially Germany.”**

    “**The Poles have been acting in a deeply European way on the border with Belarus for weeks”
    Unlike the refugees, Seehofer assured the Poles of German support. “Germany stands firmly by Poland’s side,” Seehofer said on Thursday on the online service Twitter, according to his spokesman Steve Alter.**

    Thousands of refugees from the Middle East, including many Kurds from northern Iraq, are stuck there in freezing temperatures. The EU accuses Belarusian ruler Alexander Lukashenko of deliberately smuggling the refugees to the border and using them as leverage against the EU. Poland has massed more than 15,000 security forces at the heavily secured border.

    “Without effective external border protection, Europe is calling itself into question,” Seehofer continued. “The Poles have been acting in a profoundly European manner on the border with Belarus for weeks.”

11. >Germany will not take in refugees stranded on the Belarus-Polish border

    Thank goodness.

12. >About 200 Iraqis who arrived in Belarus to cross the border with the EU turned to the Iraqi embassy in the Russian Federation and expressed a desire to return to their homeland, first flight to take place on Thursday 18.11

    I just love this. Why not apply for asylum in Russia? It’s Germany or bust.

13. Seriously, I’m not some SJW nutjob, but I still hate the fact that my cynical ass was ~90% right in seeing through your *”progressiveness”* from the get go. I’m not at 100% only because yall ended up becoming even more openly racist than I initially expected (or at least ahead of schedule). Hell, down there, there’s a comment at +20 that talks about immigrants **”innate behavior,”** and how there’s unfortunately **”nothing you can do when they come.”**

    Yall could give Hakeem Olajuwon lessons in footwork, with how hard you’ve pivoted on these issues.

14. Why we articles still calling them “refugees”? They are “economic migrants”

15. Interesting to know what happens to the ones who “lost” their documents…

    Can they voluntarily also board flights back to their home countries?

    If so, that process can be used for the rejected asylum claims in the EU by those who also “lost” their documents

16. [removed]

17. Britain will send help to Poland.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-59331828

18. [https://www.euractiv.com/section/global-europe/news/one-belarus-border-camp-cleared-as-iraqis-fly-home/](https://www.euractiv.com/section/global-europe/news/one-belarus-border-camp-cleared-as-iraqis-fly-home/)

    **One Belarus border camp cleared as Iraqis fly home**

    **A makeshift migrant camp on Belarus’ border with Poland has been cleared, Minsk said Thursday (18 November), as hundreds of Iraqis who failed to make the crossing to enter the European Union returned home.**

    The EU accuses Belarus of engineering the situation at the border in retaliation for sanctions on the ex-Soviet country. Minsk and its main ally Russia have rejected the charges and criticised the EU for not taking in the migrants seeking to cross over.

    Around 2,000 people, mainly Iraqi Kurds, had been stuck in freezing temperatures at a camp in the woods near Brouzgui crossing point, hoping to pass into EU member state Poland.

    But on Thursday the Belarusian border force announced that the camp had been cleared, with its occupants relocated “on a voluntary basis” to a reception centre nearby where they were given hot food and warm clothes.

    **Pictures of the camp looking abandoned were released and Polish authorities confirmed it had been emptied.**

    **The relocation came the same day as the first repatriation flight from Belarus, carrying 431 people, landed in Iraq.**

    “The situation was very bad, we had to eat grass and leaves from the trees, and it was cold,” one returning resident of Arbil told AFP.

19. Apparently, during the riots at Kuznica-Bruzgi border crossing on Tuesday, someone seriously damaged the internet cable connecting Belarus to Western internet resources, so Belarusian users may now have problems accessing them, says Belarus’ state provider Beltelecom. https://t.co/7ag7JXf4Vf

    Lmao

20. Europe is so welcoming

21. Posting article to show that while many migrants seem to get deceived, many indeed were not deceived and know exactly what is waiting for them.
    I mean they are not coming form places that have no internet. Always found it weird that someone would not look up the current situation at the border before deciding to spend all that money to make the trip.

    Original article: https://www.spiegel.de/ausland/irak-warum-so-viele-menschen-aus-dem-nordirak-nach-belarus-fliehen-a-3df5d943-6d40-44f4-ad62-112e4c86865f

    (Translated with Deepl)
    > Sheko Ahmed Raheem had already packed his travel bag. He had a visa for Belarus, tickets for the flight from northern Iraq via Dubai to Minsk. Like so many of his compatriots in recent weeks, he wanted to make his way from there across the border to Poland.
    >
    > But now he is still sitting in his parents’ apartment on the outskirts of Erbil, the capital of the autonomous region of Kurdistan in northern Iraq. He buries his face in his hands. He is desperate.
    >
    > FlyDubai – like quite a few other airlines – cancelled its service to Minsk last week under pressure from the EU. Raheem doesn’t know what to do now. He has deposited all of his family’s savings for visa and airline tickets with a travel agency in Erbil, a total of $4100. If he doesn’t make it to Europe or get the money back, he says, he and his parents will be broke. He is constantly researching on Facebook to see if there is still a route open to him.
    >
    > Raheem, 22, is part of Iraq’s middle class. He works for a pet food supplier, and his father is a security guard. And yet Raheem wants only one thing: to get out of Erbil. In Iraq, he says, there is no work, no livelihood, no future for young men like him. “I’d rather die on the Polish border than live in Iraq,” he says.
    >
    > Like Raheem, many Kurds from northern Iraq feel the same way. Thousands of them have made their way to Belarus since dictator Alexander Lukashenko opened the country’s border in the summer. The numbers have recently dropped significantly, as only a few airlines now fly to Belarus. However, the migration movement has not stopped completely. The Belarusian state airline Belavia still flies from Amman and Damascus to Minsk several times a week. The migrants wanted to continue from there to the EU, but Poland and Lithuania have closed their borders by force.
    >
    > At least a thousand people are still stuck between Poland and Belarus – in sub-zero temperatures. At least ten refugees have already died. The Belarusian regime is only slowly beginning to set up night camps for the refugees.
    >
    > **As harrowing as the images of freezing, starving refugees in the border region are, they have not led many citizens in northern Iraq to give up their dream of Europe.**
    >
    > **In Ranya, a town about a hundred kilometers east of Erbil, young men are hunched over a cell phone in a tea garden on a November afternoon. They are watching footage from the Polish-Belarusian border. The photos and videos show refugees sleeping huddled close together in sleeping bags in the open. Of course, fleeing to Europe is risky, says one of the men, Rwanga Ali, 26. “But what do we have to lose?”**
    >
    > Kurdistan is seen by the West as a kind of anchor of stability in a country ravaged by civil wars. In fact, the people in the autonomous region are somewhat better off than in other parts of the country. Paradoxically, however, this is precisely one of the reasons why an above-average number of northern Iraqis have made their way to Belarus. **They can afford the travel costs, unlike many countrymen in Baghdad or Basra, for example.**
    >
    > At the same time, there is enormous resentment about the conditions in the autonomous region. Although the north has various political parties, a parliament and elections, it has in fact been controlled for many years by two families, the Barzanis and the Talabanis. They once led the fight for independence against dictator Saddam Hussein and now claim the top positions in the state for themselves. Those who are not part of the ruling elite, northern Iraqi opposition figures criticize, have little chance of sharing in the prosperity. The war against “Islamic State” from 2014 and disputes with the central government in Baghdad over oil revenues have also led to the economy stagnating. Young people in particular are finding it difficult to find work.
    >
    > Rwanga Ali studied pharmacy in northern Iraq. But no one wanted to hire him. Now he works in a café. He has applied for a visa for Turkey, from where he wants to continue to Europe, either by boat to Greece or, if planes to Minsk take off again, via Belarus to Poland. Ali says he wants to get married and start a family. But that’s not possible in Ranya without enough money, he says. “I don’t want a better life, I want a life at all.”
    >
    > One of the men sitting next to him in the teahouse, who does not want to give his name for fear of repression, agrees with him. Although there is no longer a war in Kurdistan today, the people still do not live free of fear. As president of the autonomous region, Mazud Barzani has created a repressive system. Time and again, human rights activists and journalists would disappear.
    >
    > In recent weeks, social researcher Mera Jasm Bakr has spoken to several dozen northern Iraqis willing to emigrate for the Konrad Adenauer Foundation. He says it is primarily a deeply felt hopelessness that is driving his countrymen to flee. Many citizens have simply lost faith that things will change for the better. Lukashenko’s opening of the border seems to them like a unique chance to escape the misery.
    >
    > Nozhan Yassin Mustafa, whose travel agency in Ranya arranged visas to Belarus, says he was virtually overrun during the summer. “Suddenly, all the people in Ranya want to go to Belarus.”
    >
    > Academics like pharmacist Rwanga Ali would have good prospects for employment in Germany. But even for well-educated labor migrants from countries like Iraq, the hurdles on the way to Europe are almost insurmountable. To date, Germany has failed to create an immigration system modeled on Canada’s to facilitate legal entry. Instead, people are forced onto irregular, dangerous routes via Belarus or the Mediterranean.
    >
    > Travel entrepreneur Mustafa says his clients are undeterred by soldiers and the barbed-wire fence on the Polish-Belarusian border. People still beg him every day, he says: Help me get out of here.

22. >Migrants’ living conditions in the camp have greatly improved today. They now have a food truck with kebabs, hot dogs, mulled wine and beer, and even a cigarette kiosk. Everything has to be paid for though, so Belarusian authorities opened a currency exchange office.

    https://twitter.com/TadeuszGiczan/status/1461655683217203210

23. Jacek Karnowski:

    > In fact, Merkel’s capitulation – so naive as to be almost bizarre – is a desperate attempt to obscure Poland’s great success, which was to repel the assault on the borders of the Republic. It was an operational success, in a military sense; we demonstrated that we have effective structures and an effective state. But it was also a success in an even more important sphere, namely, mental success. Poland turned out to be a country that passed difficult tests, and that was resistant to blackmail, including particularly perfidious blackmail based on playing children. Only truly strong states and nations are able to win such battles.

    > This is one of the reasons why Merkel intervened in an intervention which, from a political point of view, makes no sense. She decided to legitimise Lukashenko at a time when it was clear that he could not push the immigrants through, that he would not carve out a corridor across our border. Merkel must have known this too. But she is playing a different game than she professes. She has not been concerned with defending the Union’s border, but with preventing Poland’s prestige from rising. In this game her allies are Moscow and Minsk, not Warsaw. To obscure our success, Merkel has chosen to artificially create a defeat.

    > She is not going to be decisive in defending the borders, which is already happening. But these are side threads: the most important motivation was fear of a Polish victory.

    > Merkel was clearly too late. We, and the world, already know that Poland has won, has defended its border. Unfortunately, we also know what Berlin’s real motivations are. We know how much they hate – yes, they hate – a political camp that cannot be overthrown and that pursues policies in the interests of Poland and the Polish people. And which, step by step, in pain and suffering, but nevertheless pulling itself out of its status as an almost official colony.

    https://wpolityce.pl/polityka/574633-merkel-sztucznie-wykreowala-kleske-by-uderzyc-w-polske

    The guy is PiS mouthpiece, but he is making some good points

24. Russia has moved around 100.000 soldiers next to The Ukrainian border. That is 1/10 of Russia’s peace time military capacity, says a military expert from Finland’s army. Finnish experts say that Russia’s war against Ukraine is unlikely, but not excluded. They say that the possibility of war is growing significantly.

25. > Unexpectedly, migrants announced a peaceful rally in the center of Minsk against Lukashenka. They accuse regime of deception and murder of compatriots. The organizers also hope that the Belarusians will join them, but the most active ones are already in prisons, unfortunately.

    https://twitter.com/franakviacorka/status/1461450122039107590

26. >One-year-old Syrian child dies in forest on Poland-Belarus border, both parents injured

    >PCPM said its staff had come across a young man with severe abdominal pain who was hungry and dehydrated, and a Syrian couple. “The man had a lacerated wound to his arm, and the woman had a stab wound to her lower leg,” the group tweeted. “Their one-year-old child died in the forest.”

    And they got those wounds… how?

27. Border situation is by no means better. Migrants leaving camp near Kuźnica were a distraction – somehow all media picked it as Merkels success, only there is one problem – this night there were another attacks on the border. Migrants were even more aggressive and Belarussian specnaz more openly participated in those attacks. Migrants were spraying tear gas on Polish border guards while Belarussian soldiers tried to blind Poles with lasers. Now you see what Merkel did? Only funded us all fake impression of things getting better while in fact they got worse