Fight Belarus’s Lukashenko, Not Desperate Refugees
Europe can strike a blow for human rights and democracy by upholding its values, not repudiating them because it fears Middle Eastern migrants.
A stand-off with only one real winner.
Photographer: Wojtek Radwanski/AFP via Getty Images
The artificial refugee crisis on the Belarus-Polish border has taken an ugly turn for the worse: Social networks and media websites filled with videos of Polish troops repelling Middle Eastern refugees who were trying to get through barbed wire after thousands of them had marched toward Poland accompanied by Belarussian soldiers.
The escalation is new, but the situation has persisted for months. Everything about it has been illegal: the Polish pushbacks of people who are entitled by the European Convention on Human Rights to request asylum as well as the Belarussian “travel agencies,” encouraged by President Alexander Lukashenko’s regime, that sell “packages” to potential refugees, mostly Iraqis but also Syrians and Afghans — so much for a flight to Minsk and a Belarussian visa, so much for crossing into Poland, so much for a “taxi” to eastern Germany. Centrkurort, the state-owned Belarussian travel firm, has been named as one of these facilitators. Russia’s near-official support for the human trafficking is another blatant challenge to international laws and rules. Not only does Russia allow the refugee flights to Minsk over its territory, the Kremlin is advising Lukashenko on his moves: The Belarussian dictator discussed the situation with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on Nov. 9.
One hears a lot in Europe about “standing with Poland” to resist the Belarussian “weaponization” of vulnerable people. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s Twitter message threatening tougher sanctions on Belarus and on third-country airlines carrying the refugees to Minsk was also issued in Polish. But there’s only one Poland to “stand with”— the one whose nationalist government recently declared its laws superior to European Union ones, threatening the very existence of the EU; the one that has refused to accept refugees from the Middle East while welcoming “culturally close” Ukrainians to relieve labor market tension. When it comes to values, the EU cannot side with this Poland; the only common ground is fear of a major refugee crisis like the one in 2015 — every European politician’s nightmare.