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Polish soldiers on the border with Belarus
Photo:
ARTUR RESZKO / EPA
Poland is pushing ahead with plans for a fence on the more than 400-kilometer border with Belarus.
With this, the EU member state wants to fend off migrants without valid documents who are currently coming from the authoritarian neighboring state.
Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak told Polskie Radio that the barrier should be 2.5 meters high.
Army engineers had already planned it.
The execution will then be taken over by soldiers.
Poland is reacting to the decisions of the Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko. Lukashenko announced at the end of May that his country would no longer prevent migrants from the Middle East or Afghanistan from continuing to travel to the European Union - in response to tightened Western sanctions. SPIEGEL research showed how the ruler was even systematically bringing Iraqi migrants into the country. Since then, especially in Lithuania, many people have crossed the border with Belarus without valid papers. The Baltic state has already decided to build a fence.
Poland's Defense Minister Blaszczak also announced that up to 1,000 more soldiers will be relocated to the border with Belarus, which is also the external border of the European Union, in the coming days.
Almost 1,000 members of the Polish army are currently deployed there.
As early as July, barbed wire was laid at 130 kilometers out of a total of 418 kilometers of border.
Now the fence should follow as a second barrier.
On Monday he announced that construction would start this week.
Criticism from human rights activists
Because of the dispute that has been going on for months, Poland and the three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania also want to involve the United Nations.
The heads of government of the four countries jointly declared that it was "high time to draw the attention of the UN, including the United Nations Security Council, to the mistreatment of migrants on Belarusian territory."
Meanwhile, the three EU countries with land borders with Belarus - Latvia, Lithuania and Poland - are trying to push back migrants who want to cross the border without valid documents.
In many cases, however, the Belarusian authorities send the migrants back to the EU border.
In one such case, a group of Afghan migrants has been stuck on the Polish-Belarusian border for two weeks.
Polish human rights activists are therefore accusing the national-conservative government in Warsaw of violating international law.
lau / dpa / AFP