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Germany is expanding the capacity of shelters for refugees seeking asylum after crossing the Polish border. Some of the facilities in Brandenburg they warn that they are about to collapse. These are illegal immigrants from the Middle East who are flown by mafias to Minsk, while the government of Belarus looks the other way, and which are then transported in vehicles to the border between Belarus and Poland. From there they are pushed to continue on foot. More than 5,600 have been arrested since the summer already in German territory, which is the objective of most of them, and it is impossible to know when they have entered without being detected.
The German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, believes that it is more practical to combat the problem at the European external border and is ready to send German policemen to form joint patrols with Polish agents and monitor the border between Poland and Belarus. This has been reported to the acting cabinet of ministers in Berlin, pending the formation of a coalition that emerges from the elections of last September 26 and that is still being negotiated, and has stated this in a letter sent to his Polish counterpart, offered by members of the German Federal Police who will work under Polish command. Seehofer has also joined the protests that the countries of the so-called Visegrad Group, consisting of Slovakia, Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic, by blaming the Belarusian government for Aleksánder Lukashenko to be executing a policy that qualifies as a “hybrid threat” and whose brain is Russian President Vladimir Putin. “The key is in Moscow,” said the German minister, suggesting that the EU should tighten sanctions on these two countries.
“They arrive malnourished, hypothermic and very afraid,” they explain from the Eisenhüttenstadt reception center, “we can give first aid, but soon we will not be able to with everyone if they continue to arrive at this rate.” The German Police have multiplied by eight the controls and the deployment of agents in the forests, where regrettable scenes are experienced daily, has increased. “Please do not send us back!” Were the only words he can say in German and repeated incessantly by a man in his 30s who was arrested by the German police on Tuesday night, while trying to enter the country for the city of Frankfurt Oder. “The man got down on his knees as soon as he saw us. We tried to reassure him, to explain that we were only going to take him to the Eisenhüttenstadt reception center, to which all the detainees are taken, so that the immigration authorities could deal with it, but he did not understand well and he stayed on the ground, on his knees and kissing our feet, “said the agent who carried out the arrest.
Refugees arrive by car and on foot. Also due to the cold waters of the Neisse ”, explains one of the agents. At the Zelz dam, next to the bridge that connects Siedlec (Poland) and Brandenburg, they leave burned wet clothes, belongings and identity documents, to make it difficult for them to be deported if they are detained. «They pass through here, most of them come at night», the inhabitants of the border area note, «for fear of being caught, some prefer the route through the Neisse or through the Zschorno forest and they are dangerous areas, any day we will have a dislike».
Violent scenes
The border crossings between Poland and Germany are very numerous, miles and miles of freely accessible forest that the German police cannot constantly track down. Only in some sections are there fences erected to prevent the crossing of wild boars and with them the passage of swine fever. Illegal immigrants only have to go through opening doors every few kilometers. But the scenes on the Belarusian-Polish border are more violent. This same week, a group of about fifteen men armed with axes and pliers threw logs against the barbed wire that Poland has erected to prevent the entry of illegal immigrants and confronted border agents who tried to tackle them with stones and glass bottles. . The battle, which ended with the use of tear gas by police officers, took place near the town of Usnarz Gorny. Once detained, their story repeats many others told during the summer months. They pay the mafias for the journey that they must end on foot and are trapped for weeks on the border between Belarus and Poland, heavily guarded but which, sooner or later, offers a gap.
Lukashenko announced in late May that he would no longer prevent immigrants from continuing to travel to the EU. Since then, when the groups are turned away when trying to enter Poland, the Belarusian border guard does not allow them to go back and there are cases of families trapped for weeks without water or food in an area in which Poland has decreed a state of emergency. This is the context in which the German Interior Minister has expressed his intention that “both border protection authorities notably reinforce their proven joint strips along the border.” The operation of the mixed patrols could begin immediately, but it should have the acceptance, at least provisionally, of the three parties that are currently negotiating the formation of a government. Above all, the Greens are against strengthening controls. They do not even want the word “rejections” of asylum claims in the coalition agreement text because “illegal immigrants”, as the German authorities call them, do not exist for this party.
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George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism