The accusation of the NGO Human Rights Watch is heavy: according to a report published on Wednesday, Belarus and Poland are both guilty of “serious human rights violations” against migrants and asylum seekers. asylum on the border between the two countries, while the crisis is bogged down. HRW researchers say they had in-depth interviews with 19 people whose accounts revealed that some of them “had been pushed back, sometimes violently, by Polish border guards.”
HRW stresses that these refoulements “violate the right to asylum provided for by European law” and urges the EU to “start showing solidarity with the victims at the border on both sides, who are suffering and who are dying”. In Belarus, underlines the NGO, “violence, inhuman and degrading treatment, as well as the pressure exerted by Belarusian border guards were commonplace”. This treatment could “in certain cases constitute acts of torture, in violation of Belarusian international legal obligations”.
7,000 migrants at the Polish border, 11 dead since this summer
“While Belarus has mounted this situation regardless of the human consequences, Poland shares responsibility for the acute suffering in the border area,” said Lydia Gall, Europe and Central Asia expert at HRW, in a brief. communicated. She urges Minsk and Warsaw to “put an end to ping-pong push-backs and allow independent observers, including journalists and human rights defenders, access to border areas currently subject to restrictions.”
The report states that three people accused Polish border guards of separating their families, including the parents of the children, by taking those in need of medical treatment to hospital but sending the others back to Belarus. Aid groups estimate that at least 11 people have died on both sides of the border since the crisis began this summer, while around 7,000 migrants are now massed at the border according to Belarus. For the HRW, the two governments “have an obligation to prevent new deaths, by ensuring regular humanitarian access to those stranded in the border area”.