The crisis at the EU’s external borders in Belarus may have subsided, or at least disappeared from the news, and there are still many migrants hoping to enter Europe on the Belarusian side of the border. This is what a Polish NGO says on Sunday.
In the first three weeks of January, the border group received 345 requests for assistance from people trapped in the border area. They requested humanitarian, medical and/or legal assistance.
The European Union says that since the summer, the Belarusian regime has brought many refugees to the border with the European Union, in an attempt to pressure it over the sanctions adopted against dictator Alexander Lukashenko and his allies. Because Poland in particular kept the transition period closed, many immigrants were stuck. Lithuania and Latvia also share a border with Belarus.
According to Monica Matos of the NGO Border Group, many people on the Belarusian side of the border are still waiting for a chance to enter the European Union. “Often those who manage to cross the border are in much worse shape now than they were in previous months,” Matos says. This is due to the winter weather conditions and the fact that the Polish side of the border is still heavily guarded.
Since the beginning of this year, according to the Polish border guards, 810 people have tried to cross the border illegally. Over the entire year of 2020, nearly 40,000 attempts to illegally cross the border were recorded.
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