“We are going to witness a real genocide”, alert Wednesday November 10 on franceinfo the MEP Europe Ecology The Greens Damien Carême, while thousands of migrants are massed at the border between Poland and Belarus. Pushed by Belarusian security forces towards the border, Polish border guards and soldiers do not allow them to enter European territory, leaving them at the mercy of cold and hunger. A “intolerable situation” denounced by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet, who calls for humanitarian access “immediate”.
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According to EELV MEP Damien Carême, former mayor of Grande-Synthe (North) from 2001 to 2019, a city particularly faced with the crisis in welcoming migrants, the European Union must put pressure on Poland, so that it respect “international conventions and in particular those on the rights of the child”, in particular by making the granting of aid from the post-Covid recovery fund conditional on the opening of Polish borders to migrants.
franceinfo: French government spokesperson Gabriel Attal accuses Belarus of “human trafficking” on Wednesday. Is he right ?
Damien Carême: In any case, it is an instrumentalisation of these people. The Lithuanian authorities assure that Belarus would organize flights from Baghdad and Istanbul, to bring back people seeking refuge in Europe, in Belarus, and push them to the Polish border. Belarus is not located on known migratory routes. For Iraqis, Syrians, Somalis, Afghans, this is not really the road. It is therefore perhaps the proof that it is the instrumentalization of migrants. And play on the difficulty for Europe to agree on its migration policy. How do we agree on how we welcome these people on the continent?
Is the reception of these migrants massed at the Polish-Belarusian border so unmanageable for Europe?
No, it’s a reception crisis, few people compared to 450 million Europeans. These are people fleeing from countries at war: Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq. Are we going to send people back to Afghanistan, to Iraq?
“These few thousand people, let us welcome them to Europe and put an immediate end to this unbearable situation.”
Damien Carême, former mayor of Grande-Syntheto franceinfo
We can’t even go and see them. A state of emergency has been declared in Poland along the border with Belarus, and therefore we cannot reach them, NGOs cannot access them. Europe must really play and weigh very heavily on this border to open it. These people are not fed, are in the cold. Imagine the weather in November in Poland.
How can the EU force Poland to reopen its border?
We are going to witness a real genocide. The EU cannot stand by and do nothing. Europe has the means for Poland to open its doors. We have the stimulus funds that must be allocated post-Covid crisis. Well, we can put in place a conditionality, we do not give the funds to Poland until it has opened its border. Then, we will not send these people home, and we will see how we can welcome them with dignity. And all this while respecting international conventions, and that of the rights of the child because there are also children among these people. Europe has retaliatory means to act.