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Post by karl on Nov 18, 2021 19:28:31 GMT -7
"Belarus state news agency Belta said the migrants sheltering in the forest had been brought to a warehouse in Belarus away from the frontier. A spokesperson for Polish border guards confirmed the camps had been cleared." J.J. Not to sound impertinent, but Mr. Lukashenko is a little man with a loud mouth and he knows he has acted some what rash, then to keep face, to shout a bit and run around in circles. But in the reality, he is now faced with two fronts of action, and that is the Russians from his east and the Germans from his West so, should he risk being stepped on? Or become sensible and do as Angela Merkle has suggested. For little men such as Lukashenko enjoy to kick about those that have not the means to defend them selves, but when faced with real and actual power, of course he then becomes docile and do as he is told. ""Americans once had a great man who headed a great nation, and, one of his sayings has always struck a note in my own mind: Speak Softly and carry a big stick"" www.americahousekyiv.org/ah-blog/2020/1/10/speak-softly-and-carry-a-big-stickKarl
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Post by JustJohn or JJ on Nov 19, 2021 4:28:31 GMT -7
Karl, You are absolutely correct.
He was a great man and fondly remembered by many even though he was a Rough Rider.
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Post by JustJohn or JJ on Nov 19, 2021 9:38:21 GMT -7
Poland says Belarus ferries migrants back to border after clearing camps
Reuters
Yara Abi Nader and Kacper Pempel November 19, 2021, 10:55 AM
BIELSK PODLASKI, Poland/BRUZGI, Belarus (Reuters) -Poland accused Belarus on Friday of trucking hundreds of migrants back to the border and pushing them to attempt to cross illegally, only hours after clearing camps at a frontier that has become the focus of an escalating East-West crisis.
The accusation by Poland suggests the crisis has not been resolved by an apparent change of tack by Minsk, which on Thursday had cleared the main camps by the border and allowed the first repatriation flight to Iraq in months.
European governments accuse Belarus of flying in thousands of people from the Middle East and pushing them to attempt illegally to cross the EU border, where several people have died in the freezing woods. Belarus denies fomenting the crisis.
Polish Border Guard spokesperson Anna Michalska said that by Thursday evening, just hours after clearing the camps, Belarus authorities were already trucking hundreds back and forcing them to try to cross in darkness.
"(The Belarusians) were bringing more migrants to the place where there was a forced attempt to cross," Michalska said. "At the beginning there were 100 people, but then the Belarusian side brought more people in trucks. Then there were 500 people."
When the migrants tried to cross the border, Belarusian troops blinded Polish guards with lasers, she told a news conference. Some migrants had thrown logs and four guards sustained minor injuries.
Access to the border on the Polish side is restricted by a state of emergency, making it difficult to verify her account.
"NIGHTMARE"
In an interview with the BBC, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko repeated denials that he had orchestrated the crisis but, asked if Belarus was helping migrants try and cross into Poland he said: "I think that's absolutely possible. We're Slavs. We have hearts. Our troops know the migrants are going to Germany."
"Maybe someone helped them. I won't even look into this," he added.
The migrants from the camp on the Belarus side were taken on Thursday to a huge, crowded warehouse, and journalists were permitted to film them. Children ran about on Friday morning, and men played cards while one dandled a toddler on his lap.
Meanwhile in a hospital in Bielsk Podlaski on the Polish side, two migrants who had been caught after crossing were given treatment, only to be taken away by Polish border guards.
Before he was taken away, Mansour Nassar, 42, a father of six from Aleppo who had travelled to Belarus from Lebanon, described his ordeal during five days in the forest.
"The Belarusian army told us: 'If you come back, we will kill you'" he said, in tears in his hospital bed. "We drank from ponds… Our people are always oppressed."
Kassam Shahadah, a Syrian refugee doctor living in Poland who helps out in another hospital, said patients were terrified of being forcibly returned to Belarus.
"What they have seen, what they have lived through on that side is a nightmare for them."
EXTREME SUFFERING
Human rights groups say Poland has exacerbated the suffering by sending back those who try to cross. Poland says this is necessary to stop more people from coming.
"I have personally listened to the appalling accounts of extreme suffering from desperate people - among whom many families, children and elderly - who spent weeks or even months in squalid and extreme conditions in the cold and wet woods due to these pushbacks," Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights Dunja Mijatović said after a four-day mission to Poland.
"I have witnessed clear signs of their painful ordeal: wounds, frostbite, exposure to extreme cold, exhaustion and stress," she said. "I have no doubt that returning any of these people to the border will lead to more extreme human suffering and more deaths."
The Polish border guards have recorded seven deaths at the border. Rights groups say more than ten people have died.
"CYNICAL AND INHUMANE"
Europeans have shunned Lukashenko since a disputed election last year, but reached out cautiously this week, with German Chancellor Angela Merkel speaking to Lukashenko twice by phone.
But on Thursday the European Commission and Germany rejected a proposal that Minsk said Lukashenko had made to Merkel, under which EU countries would take in 2,000 migrants, and 5,000 others would be sent back home..
The United States accused Minsk of using the migrants as "pawns in its efforts to be disruptive".
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on Friday that the situation on the borders remained deeply concerning.
"Lukashenko's regime's use of vulnerable people as a means to put pressure on other countries is cynical and inhumane. NATO stands in full solidarity with all affected allies."
(Reporting by Joanna Plucinska, Pawel Florkiewicz, Anna Wlodarczak-Semczuk, Leon Malherbe, Yara Abi Nader, Kacper Pempel, Stephan Schepers, Andrius SytasWriting by Joanna Plucinska and Ingrid MelanderEditing by Peter Graff)
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Post by JustJohn or JJ on Nov 22, 2021 4:59:40 GMT -7
Reuters Videos Poland: There may be worse to come in border crisis Mon, November 22, 2021, 1:13 AM
Poland's leader warned on Sunday that the migrant crisis on its border with Belarus could be a prelude to something worse.
Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said the crisis was far from over, as he toured Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia.
The EU has accused Belarus of flying in thousands of people from the Middle East and pushing them to cross into the EU states, in response to European sanctions.
Morawiecki said the situation in Afghanistan could be utilised next:
“We know of diplomatic and official contacts of Belarus and Russia with Uzbekistan and Afghanistan and there probably will be an attempt to use the crisis in Afghanistan as the next stage of the migration crisis.
And the migration crisis is just one part of the great political crisis in which Lukashenko with his real principal – and I think nobody has doubts that this is president Putin – will continue such actions."
Minsk, which denies fomenting the crisis, cleared a migrant camp near the border on Thursday and started to repatriate some people to Iraq.
Despite this, Poland's border guard alleges that Belarus is still transporting hundreds of migrants to the frontier.
Poland's leader says things could escalate, pointing to an increased Russian military presence close to Ukraine, as well as in Belarus and Russia's Kaliningrad enclave which borders Poland and Lithuania.
A recent poll shows that more than half of Poles are worried the crisis on the border could lead to an armed conflict.
Hundreds took to the streets of Warsaw on Saturday to demand help for the migrants.
About 10 migrants are believed to have died on the Poland-Belarus border, where a frigid winter has set in.
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Post by karl on Nov 22, 2021 9:05:17 GMT -7
""A recent poll shows that more than half of Poles are worried the crisis on the border could lead to an armed conflict"".
J.J.
This poll that was taken has a sound of reality and be what we do not need or wish for. For it just takes some thing like an accidental fire arm discharge to set off a situation of return fire and there we go..
Karl
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Post by JustJohn or JJ on Nov 23, 2021 10:22:30 GMT -7
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Post by pieter on Nov 23, 2021 17:15:18 GMT -7
The body of an unborn child that died in the womb of its mother as she tried to cross from Belarus into the European Union was buried in a tiny white coffin in a Muslim cemetery in north-east Poland.
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Post by karl on Nov 23, 2021 18:46:59 GMT -7
Pieter
This little fellow had no chance to life that rightly should have been for it live through to an old age, now cheated out of his/her chance to live. It rankles the mind that a mother should take such a chance against the life of her unborn child for her pursuit of her own wants.
Now, the child is no more of what could have been for no good reason of all this nonsense.
Karl
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Post by Jaga on Nov 23, 2021 23:11:09 GMT -7
Pieter, Karl, John I am still surprised why people would take small kids with them. Unfortunately people are still dying, three are buried at the muslim community cemetery in Poland. The pregnant woman also lost her baby and she is in the hospital right now
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Post by pieter on Nov 24, 2021 1:09:20 GMT -7
Jaga,
Took the funeral take place near one of the wooden mosques of the native Polish Muslim Tartar communities. The imam spoke Polish, I think he must be a Polish Tartar.
Cheers, Pieter
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