Since the summer of 2021 the situation at the Polish-Belarusian border has been in the spotlight of the local, EU and international observers, politicians, activists, journalists and researchers. Polish regulations prohibit the presence of media and activists in the border zone. The death toll of this crisis increases with the use of pushbacks by state authorities and freezing temperatures in the primordial Polish forest. The situation in Poland reminds crises on the Southern borders of the EU, where pushbacks have been in use and the term “hybrid war” has been applied to justify border militarisation and criminalisation of people seeking international protection. At the same time, the situation in Poland contrasts with Germany’s response to the 2015 crisis, when asylum cases have been lawfully processed.
In order to discuss this crisis and to learn from other crises, on December 16 and 17 of 2021, the Centre of Migration Research of the University of Warsaw organized a two-day webinar entitled “Humanitarian crisis at the Polish-Belarusian frontier – Old and new diagnoses from external EU borders”; Eleni Takou and Evgenia Kouniani from #HumanRights360 participated and presented the situation in Greece, as also analyzed in the latest report “The doctrine of the ‘instrumentalization’ of refugees. The borders of Evros in the era of the securitization of borders”. A report of the discussion is available here: http://www.migracje.uw.edu.pl/…/Spotlight-DECEMBER-2021…
The discussion is available here:
