13:05, 1 September 2016

Chechens do not want to go home after being refused entry to Poland

Refugees from Chechnya in a camp near Belarus-Poland border. Photo by Stanislav Korshunov, TUT.BY http://news.tut.by/society/510015.html

The Chechens, who are refused entry to Poland from Belarus, do not want to return home, and many of them decided to stay in Brest.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that on August 31, Mariusz Błaszczak, Polish Minister of Internal Affairs, stated that the authorities of Poland would not grant asylum to migrants from Chechnya, since there is no war in this Russian region. The Minister has made such a statement after on August 29, more than 150 Russian citizens from Chechnya gathered at the Belarusian-Polish border and demanded from Poland to grant them asylum. On August 30, the migrants left their spontaneously arranged camp.

The main land route of Chechen migrants is to Poland through Belarus. Many of them treat Poland only as an entry point, and they tend to continue their journey to the West, in particularly, to Germany and less frequently to Austria, France, Belgium, and Denmark. According to the Office for Foreigners in Poland, from 2009 till May 2015, more than 39,300 Russian citizens applied for the refugee status in the country. Most of them were natives of the Chechen Republic. This was reported by the article "How to go to Europe and get the refugee status" published on the "Caucasian Knot".

According to Roman Kislyak, a Belarusian human rights defender, he learned from Chechen migrants about pressure, threats and dangers faced by those people in their homeland, the "Euroradio" quotes Roman Kislyak and one of the Chechen refugees as stating.

According to one of the migrants from Chechnya interviewed at the station "Brest Central", he wants to go to a country which complies with the Geneva Convention and respects human rights.

"We do not want to stay in countries that fail to comply with all that. However, there are people who have decided to stay in Brest and become citizens of Belarus," reported the migrant.

He has noted that in the evening of August 30, the migrants' camp near the border checkpoint disappeared, since it became cold for the people to spend nights on the ground. According to them, they do not plan to repeat their action, since they have achieved their goal and attracted the media's attention to their problem.

The Chechen migrant points out to certain changes, albeit slow ones, that the border guards have started to implement. According to him, on August 30 and 31, more than 50 Chechens were allowed entering the territory of Poland, while on August 29, before the migrants' protest action, only four Chechens entered the country.

Full text of the article is available on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’.