WARSAW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 17th October, 2021) People took to the street in downtown Warsaw on Sunday to press the government to grant asylum to undocumented migrants stranded on the Polish-Belarusian border, a Sputnik correspondent reported.
The demonstrators are chanting "Stop tortures on the border!" and "Shame" in the wake of recent reports that several people have died on both sides of the border, trying to illegally cross into Poland from Belarus.
Several thousand people are marching from the city center, with stopovers outside the parliament's building and in the Constitution Square.
"For almost two months now, the Polish authorities have been taking measures that killed at least 6 people seeking asylum in Poland and Europe. The lives of several hundred more people trying to get out of the border forests are at risk. There are children among them. These are refugees from Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Turkey and other countries where war, persecution and violence await them," the demonstration's organizers said in a statement.
The organizers, including many public organizations, such as the Feminist Fund and Lambda Warszawa defending the LGBTI+ community in Poland, also slammed Warsaw for preventing these refugees from obtaining asylum, as well as refusing to provide medical assistance and illegally taking them to the border with Belarus.
According to the Polish border guard service, over 7,000 illegal border crossing attempts from Belarus to Poland have been recorded in Poland since early October. The total number of attempted crossings since early September stands at around 20,000.
In recent months, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland have reported an increasing influx of undocumented migrants trying to cross into the EU from Belarus, with Brussels repeatedly accusing Minsk of contributing to the migration crisis after it imposed sanctions on Minsk. Belarus, in turn, said that it could no longer suppress migration to neighboring countries due to lack of resources caused by Western sanctions against the country.
