The people were beaten by Polish and Belarusian police officers, said several victims from the Kurdish autonomous regions.
A 38-year-old from Dohuk said he was ill-treated and later forcibly deported from Belarus. In addition, he and other migrants had neither water nor food. “We were treated inhumanely,” said a 71-year-old Yezidi. A 41-year-old man from Erbil said he was tortured by officers from Belarus and Poland. He also said: “The Belarusian authorities have betrayed us.”
Attempted breakthrough
The Polish border guards reported yesterday that a group of around 100 migrants tried unsuccessfully to break through the fortifications from Belarus. The incident occurred on Saturday shortly before midnight near the town of Czeremsza, said a spokeswoman. Belarusian security forces drove the group to the border by truck and threw a boardwalk over the barbed wire barn. The Polish border guards were pelted with stones and branches and blinded with laser beams.
The Polish government has meanwhile been ready to pay for the repatriation of the refugees. “We are in a position to finance the return of migrants to their countries of origin at any moment, we have also developed a lot of diplomatic activities in Iraq and in other Middle Eastern countries,” said Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki on Sunday after a meeting with Estonia Prime Minister Kaja Kallis.
“Families Lured into Tragedy”
The EU Commission has again made serious accusations against the Belarusian ruler Alexander Lukashenko. “During the crisis, Lukashenko behaved like a tour operator without a license, who sold expensive travel packages to the EU, but which then collapsed on arrival,” said EU Interior Commissioner Ylva Johansson of “Welt am Sonntag”.
“Families and children were deceived and lured into a tragedy that caused a lot of suffering,” said the Swede, who is responsible for migration issues. Lukashenko and his regime would have “a high degree of responsibility for the crisis that has been produced”.
Source From: Nachrichten
