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UN rights chief calls on Poland and Belarus to ‘de-escalate’ crisis | News

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Michelle Bachelet has called on Warsaw and Minsk to resolve the “unbearable situation” on a shared border where hundreds of people are left in freezing conditions.

UN Human Rights chief Michelle Bachelet has called on Belarus and Poland to remove the “unbearable” migrant crisis on their shared border, saying those stranded on the border should not spend another night without shelter from freezing temperatures.

Bachelet’s statements on Wednesday came after Warsaw said it had moved thousands more troops to move, after hundreds of people had been tried. night To cross from Belarus to Poland.

Minsk has accused Polish security forces of illegally seeking asylum seekers in Belarus.

Today, hundreds of people are encamped on the border, in areas close to the border, including in the surrounding forests, part of the 4,000 migrants and refugees gathered.

“I urge the states involved to take immediate action to reduce and resolve this unsustainable situation, in accordance with their obligations under international human rights law and refugee law,” Bachelet said in a statement.

“These hundreds of men, women and children should not be forced to spend another frozen night without shelter, food, water and adequate medical care,” he said. “Under international law, no one should ever be prevented from seeking protection, and personal protection needs should be taken into account.”

Bachelet has called for support staff, lawyers and journalists to drift.

The actions in Warsaw and Minsk, he said, “increased the spread of troops and the accompanying inflammatory rhetoric” that increased the vulnerability and risks faced by migrants.

‘The rise of state terrorism’

Poland and other EU member states accuse Belarus of encouraging migrants and refugees to try to cross the shared border as a result of a controversial election in August 2020, which gave former President Alexander Lukashenko a sixth term in revenge for Western sanctions imposed on Minsk.

The bloc’s 27 ambassadors will agree on Wednesday that the growing number of people flying to Belarus to reach the EU border is Lukashenko’s “hybrid war”; The legal basis for the new sanctions has allegedly targeted dozens of Belarusian people and entities.

European Council President Charles Michel said the bloc must act “in solidarity” in the face of the border crisis while visiting Warsaw on Wednesday.

“We are facing a hybrid, savage, violent and undeserved attack, and we can only respond to this firmly and with unity, in line with our core values,” Mateusz Morawiecki told reporters at a joint press conference with Polish Prime Minister. He described the developing situation as a “manifestation of state terrorism”.

Russia-backed Minsk denies engineering the migrant crisis and instead blames the European power and the United States for the dire situation they are accused of.

Moscow has blamed the EU for the situation and accused Belarus, a country it sees as a strategic buffer against NATO, of intending to impose more sanctions on the West.

Russia has sent two strategic nuclear bombers to guard Belarusian airspace to show support for its ally.



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