For three weeks, a group of around thirty people allegedly from Afghanistan has been stuck on the border between Belarus and Poland.

The people wanted to get from Belarus to the EU country Poland near the small village Usnarz Górny, but are prevented from crossing the border by Polish security forces.

The Polish border guards do not let anyone through from the other side either: They prevented human rights activists, parliamentarians and priests from bringing food, blankets and medicines to the group.

The drama at the border was a constant topic in the Polish media.

Reinhard Veser

Editor in politics.

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But since Thursday the events in Usnarz Górny have been hidden from the public: President Andrzej Duda has declared a state of emergency for thirty days over a three-kilometer-wide strip along the Polish-Belarusian border. This means that only residents and security forces are allowed to stay in this area, that gatherings of people are forbidden there and that access to all information is restricted "that has to do with the protection of the state border and countermeasures against illegal migration".

The parliament, the Sejm, has to approve the imposition of the state of emergency retrospectively - this will happen on Monday at the latest. The national-conservative government, at whose request Duda declared a state of emergency, lost its majority in the Sejm in mid-August in a dispute over a law directed against the most important non-governmental (and thus anti-government) television station. But since the far-right confederation has already signaled its approval, its prospects are good to maintain the state of emergency despite angry protests from the opposition.

She sees the step, which has so far been unique in the history of democratic Poland after 1989, as a maneuver with which the national-conservative PiS wants to divert attention from its growing difficulties. Recent surveys have shown that this calculation could work: The PiS’s tough stance towards refugees and the strong accentuation of the topic in the state media has initially slowed the trend in the polls, which is worrying for the government.

The government claims that there is an acute threat situation on the border with Belarus. There is no doubt that the Minsk ruler Alexandr Lukashenko actually wants to use refugees to destabilize neighboring EU countries. That the rapidly growing number of people from Iraq, Africa and now Afghanistan who have been trying to illegally enter Lithuania, Latvia and Poland via Belarus since the beginning of the summer are his revenge for the sanctions imposed by the EU for the brutal suppression of the democracy movement in Belarus Lukashenko himself said openly.

There are numerous indications that his regime is acting as a smuggler and smuggler, bringing people into the country and then pushing them to the borders.

Lithuanian border guards have seen Belarusian security forces force people towards the border.

According to official information from the Warsaw government, it found 3,500 attempts at illegal border crossings in August, of which around 2,500 were prevented.

All three of Belarus’s EU neighbors have now started erecting border fences.

Critics insulted as Russian agents of influence

The Polish opposition also agrees that the country's eastern border must be secured. However, like several Catholic bishops, she demands humane treatment of the refugees who have been instrumentalized by Lukashenko. And she is certain that the state of emergency is unnecessary - especially since Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak announced earlier this week that Poland did not need any help from the EU border protection agency Frontex, the situation was under control.

But now the national conservatives are connecting the refugees with a second topic: the Russian-Belarusian military maneuver Sapad-2021, which is expected to begin next week with more than 100,000 soldiers in western Russia and Belarus. It is “not difficult” to see the connection between the “artificial crisis” at the border caused by the Lukashenko regime and the major maneuver, said President Andrzej Duda on Wednesday. Various PiS politicians indulge in speculation about possible provocations during the maneuver and speculation that Lukashenko was testing the Polish border on behalf of Putin.

This is often linked to the claim that the opposition and the critical media are riddled with Russian agents who want to undermine the security of Poland with their criticism of the government's actions. President Duda also spoke of "anti-Polish" behavior by the opposition. The opposition, meanwhile, is accusing the PiS of categorically rejecting the imposition of a state of emergency in the consensus of all parties during the first corona wave last year. At the time, the opposition saw this as a legal means of legally postponing the presidential election scheduled for May. The PiS wanted to prevent the postponement of the election at the time - it obviously saw the chance to secure an easy victory for its candidate Andrzej Duda under the conditions of the pandemic.Duda emerged as the winner of the postponed election after a long dispute - but the result was extremely close.