"Reporters from international news organizations, including
The New York Times, were invited to witness the squalor and desperation at the
border.
“Thank you Belarus. Thank you Belarus,” said Rebas Ali, 28,
one of those being moved into shelter. “Beautiful Belarus.”
Belarusian officials insist that the humanitarian
catastrophe has been created by the European Union’s refusal to abide by
international law and give people fleeing war and despair the right to at least
apply for asylum once they enter Poland, a member of the bloc.
Poland, eager to keep the migrants’ suffering out of
the public eye, has sealed off its side of the border, barring aid workers,
journalists and even doctors. On Tuesday, hundreds of migrants tried to rush
into Poland, but Polish border forces used water cannons and tear gas to drive
them back.
After the melee, the nationalist governing party in Poland sought
to portray it as a great victory.
“Thank you to the soldiers for stopping today’s assault,” Mariusz Blaszczak, the minister of defense,
tweeted on Tuesday. “Poland is still safe. All soldiers currently serving on
the border will receive special financial rewards.”
He said that while the pressure at the main crossing eased
overnight, there were attempts to cross at multiple other points along the
250-mile border.
“The situation at the Belarusian border will not be resolved
quickly,” the defense minister said on Wednesday in an interview with the
Polish Radio One, the national broadcaster. “We have to prepare for months, if
not years.”
The total number of migrants at the border is estimated
between 2,000 and 4,000, many of them from Syria, Iraq and other parts of the
Middle East. Poland has now deployed more than 15,000 soldiers, joining scores
of border guards and police officers.
Balia Ahmed, 31, was in the warehouse with two children — 8
and 10 — and her husband. She said she was very nervous about being there for
fear of being deported, but felt she had no other choice.
“My kids were freezing and about to die,” she said.
The confrontation along the border of Poland and Belarus is
many things — a humanitarian crisis in the making, a geopolitical standoff and
another testament to the hardships of migration.
But it has also become a battle to control the narrative.
Belarus — blamed by the West for luring migrants to the
country and engineering the crisis — is eager for the world to see the
situation it has created. Poland, which has mobilized to block the migrants, is
trying to restrict media coverage, which led to the detention on Tuesday of a
New York Times photographer.
Poland’s nationalist government is prohibiting journalists
from working in a “red zone” border area where migrants are trying to cross
into the country from Belarus. It has also mobilized more than 15,000 soldiers,
police officers and border agents in what leaders portray as a sweeping effort
to keep the country safe.
On Tuesday evening, the Times photographer, Maciek
Nabrdalik, and two colleagues were trying to document the militarization of the
eastern frontier when they were detained by Polish soldiers for more than an
hour. They were handcuffed, their cameras were inspected and their car was searched.
For more than a week, Mr. Nabrdalik had been driving
along the border to document the buildup, and while police officers had often
stopped him, asking for identification, they had allowed him to keep working as
long as he stayed clear of the red zone. At dusk on Tuesday, the three
photographers pulled up to a military encampment outside the tiny village of
Wiejki, only a few miles from the border.
“It is close to the restricted zone but outside the zone,”
Mr. Nabrdalik said. “We came to the gate and introduced ourselves and told them
we would take photographs outside and just wanted to give them a heads up. This
is completely legal in Poland.”
As the photographers prepared to leave, more than a dozen
armed soldiers surrounded them, ordered them to empty their pockets and remove
their coats in the frigid weather, and then handcuffed them. Soldiers then
emptied Mr. Nabrdalik’s car and inspected their cameras.
“I told them listen, we are journalists, what they are doing
now is breaking the law in Poland,” Mr. Nabrdalik said.
The police arrived more than an hour later and the tone
changed, Mr. Nabrdalik said. Police officers offered a flashlight to help them
collect their belongings from the side of the road, and, eventually, they were
allowed to drive away.
Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany is taking the lead in
trying to find a diplomatic way out of the migrant crisis on the European
Union’s eastern frontiers, talking with President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko of
Belarus — and aggravating some of her European allies.
Ms. Merkel, who on Wednesday had her second phone call this
week with Mr. Lukashenko, is the first leader of an E.U. or NATO country in
more than a year to have direct contact with a ruler the West calls
illegitimate.
Her phone calls have not gone over well with Poland — which
has described the massing of migrants on its border as an attack by Belarus —
or with the Baltic states, all of which are on the eastern frontiers of both
NATO and the E.U. They have accused the German leader of bypassing them and
playing into the hands of Mr. Lukashenko and his main ally, President Vladimir
V. Putin of Russia.
Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda, speaking while traveling
in Montenegro on Wednesday, said that his country “will not accept any
agreements reached over our heads.”
The governments of Lithuania and Latvia — which, like
Poland, border Belarus and are trying to keep out migrants — were also
displeased, according to European news media.
But Ms. Merkel’s spokesman, Stefan Seibert, said her
meetings were held in “close coordination with the European Commission and
after preliminary information from important partners in the region.”
That is not quite the same as saying she was speaking for
the E.U., but Moscow seemed ready to interpret it that way. Dmitri S. Peskov,
the Kremlin spokesman, said Wednesday of Ms. Merkel’s contacts: “It is very
important that contact has been made between representatives of the E.U. and
the leadership of Belarus.”
Western leaders had shunned Mr. Lukashenko since his violent
suppression last year of street demonstrations, after he claimed a landslide
re-election that critics said was a sham. But the Kremlin says the West should
deal directly with him to resolve the migrant standoff.
Ms. Merkel’s office released a low-key description of her
conversation on Wednesday with Mr. Lukashenko, saying only that she had
“underlined the need to provide humanitarian care and return options for the
people affected,” working with the United Nations and the European Union.
Mr. Lukashenko’s office went much farther, claiming that the
two leaders “agreed that the problem will be addressed at the level of Belarus
and the E.U., and that the two sides will designate officials who will
immediately enter into negotiations in order to resolve the existing problems,”
the Belarus state news agency
reported.
It was unclear, but a subject of speculation, what leverage
Ms. Merkel may have tried to use with Mr. Putin or Mr. Lukashenko. She has long
been the European Union’s most influential leader, but she is also now a lame
duck, holding office only until a new governing coalition is formed in Germany.
A Belarusian pipeline operator has slowed the flow of oil to
Poland, according to a Russian news report on Wednesday, claiming that it was
related to unplanned maintenance.
The report, by the Tass news
agency, raised the specter that energy might be being used as a
weapon in the confrontation between Belarus and the European Union. Several
major oil and natural gas pipelines important for Europe’s economy flow across
the same border where migrants have been massing for weeks and pressing for
entry into Poland and the European Union.
But the chances of a major slowdown of critical energy
supplies seemed remote as Russia, a steadfast ally of Belarus, pushed back on earlier threats
from the government there that it could turn off the energy spigot.
The oil slowdown followed a blunt threat last
week by Belarus’s leader, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, to halt the flow of natural
gas.
“We provide heat to Europe, and they are threatening us with
the border closure,” Mr. Lukashenko said. “What if we block natural gas
transit?”"
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