Germany will not accept any refugee stranded on the Belarusian border with the European Union.
Federal Interior Minister Horst Seehofer (CSU) made this clear during a visit to Warsaw.
Reports that the federal government is ready to bring people to Germany are “false reports”, with which “pressure” must be exerted and “mood” created. “We will see this more often in the near future.”
Belarusian President-spokesperson Natalja Ismont said that Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) wanted to negotiate with the European Union on the creation of a “humanitarian corridor to Germany” for 2000 migrants along the border with Poland.
Merkel again called Belarus’s ruler Alexander Lukashenko on Wednesday over the refugee crisis.
On the EU’s outer border with Belarus, especially Poland’s border, thousands of refugees from the Middle East, including many Kurds from northern Iraq, have been trapped in icy temperatures for weeks.
The European Union has accused Lukashenko of deliberately smuggling refugees across the border. Poland has gathered more than 15,000 security guards at the heavily guarded border.
Seehofer said Germany is ready to contribute to the humanitarian care of refugees from the Belarusian side. “What we will not do, is that we take refugees, which we give under pressure.”
The ultimate goal of all humanitarian aid is to bring people back to their countries of origin.
The interior minister expressed “solidarity” and “thank you” for the neighboring country: “What Poland is doing in this crisis is right and legitimate.” By sealing the border, the Poles are “not only pursuing their own interests, they are also acting as a service to the entire European Union”.
Seehofer’s Polish ally Mariusz Kaminski (56) confirmed that nothing would change during his government. “There will be no way for cynicism to illegal migration here.”
Human rights organizations, on the other hand, accuse the right-wing nationalist government in Poland of inhuman and sometimes cruel treatment of refugees at the border. From Polish territory, migrants are repeatedly deported back to Belarus, where they are trapped in a strip between Polish and Belarusian security forces without shelter or humanitarian aid.
