Yusuf Atallah is a Syrian citizen living in a refugee shelter in the Polish city of Bialystok.
Like many others, he tried to enter the country via Belarus, the estuary route to a new arena of conflict between East and West and between democratic Europe and Russia and its allies. Unlike many who tried to infiltrate Poland and failed, Joseph succeeded.
In an interview with the American news network CNN, Atallah tells how he arrived in Belarus on a flight from Beirut and how the Belarusian army instructed him to reach the border area.
That's where the help ended.
Atallah and another group of four refugees were ordered to cross the border into neighboring Poland.
When they failed and turned to return to Minsk, they were brutally beaten by Belarusian border guards.
For nearly two weeks, Yusuf and his friends roamed the forests in the border area, drinking puddles of water and waiting for a fitness knowledge in which Border Police and Polish police would be absent from the area.
"One morning we arrived at the camp of other refugees who had abandoned him. We were looking for something to eat in their belongings. I found one sugar cube. I sucked it because I could not chew. The blows twisted my jaw and everything hurt. But I was hungry," the Syrian refugee told the American news network. .
Yusuf and other refugees from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan have become, to their detriment, human weapons in the arsenal of a cynical and sophisticated leader who is determined to punish the West for supporting those who oppose his rule. Alexander Lukashenko survived an unprecedented wave of protests in the summer of 2020 and despite crippling sanctions from the EU, his regime has managed to survive, and now, backed by the Kremlin, he is striving to teach Europe a lesson. Lukashenko is not the first to use immigrants as a threat to Western European countries. Turkish President Erdogan and Libyan persecutor Muammar Gaddafi have also made similar use of waves of migrants from the Middle East and Africa to Europe in order to put pressure on the union. But Lukashenko's plan stands out for its cynicism and cruelty.
From the summer months, the authorities in Minsk allow one-time entry visas for citizens of conflict-ridden countries, citizens who have nowhere to go and will not usually be accepted in any country, with the purpose of immigrants not staying in Belarus but arriving in Germany. Good and comfortable life for immigrants from the Middle East. But between Salarus and the Promised Land of Germany lies Poland, a conservative country that is deeply embroiled with the European Union on issues, of which immigration is one of the biggest.
Now Lukashenko seeks to drive a wedge, widening the gap between his rivals in hopes of bringing about their collapse, at least in part, reducing external pressure on his dictatorial regime and the union's sanctions on its economy.
In the past week, Lukashenko has escalated the struggle and more than 4,000 migrant labor migrants on Poland's eastern border.
Lukashenko's military is waging a war of attrition that includes loud music, dazzling spotlights and Benyon laser markers to exhaust Polish border guards and allow immigrants to cross the border.
Immigrants near the Polish border, Photo: AP
In the face of harsh criticism from the West, Russia has denied involvement in the policy and Lukashenko's, but has made it clear, with a series of military maneuvers that included flying nuclear bombers over Belarus' territory, that they are behind the dictator in Minsk. But despite Russian support, Lukashenko's move may turn out to be a gamble of despair. So far, the EU has defended all of Warsaw's decisions and instead of attacking each other, Germany, Poland and the Baltic states are already considering further punitive measures against Minsk. While Moscow's patience with him erodes and Putin waves the threat of union between Russia and Belarus, Lukashenko's bill may reveal that like the unfortunate immigrants he sent to roam the border forests of Poland, he too is trapped between a rock and a hard place.
Yusuf Atallah is a Syrian citizen living in a refugee shelter in the Polish city of Bialystok.
Like many others, he tried to enter the country via Belarus, the estuary route to a new arena of conflict between East and West and between democratic Europe and Russia and its allies. Unlike many who tried to infiltrate Poland and failed, Joseph succeeded.
In an interview with the American news network CNN, Atallah tells how he arrived in Belarus on a flight from Beirut and how the Belarusian army instructed him to reach the border area.
That's where the help ended.
Atallah and another group of four refugees were ordered to cross the border into neighboring Poland.
When they failed and turned to return to Minsk, they were brutally beaten by Belarusian border guards.
For nearly two weeks, Yusuf and his friends roamed the forests in the border area, drinking puddles of water and waiting for a fitness knowledge in which Border Police and Polish police would be absent from the area.
"One morning we arrived at the camp of other refugees who had abandoned him. We were looking for something to eat in their belongings. I found one sugar cube. I sucked it because I could not chew. The blows twisted my jaw and everything hurt. But I was hungry," the Syrian refugee told the American news network. .
Yusuf and other refugees from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan have become, to their detriment, human weapons in the arsenal of a cynical and sophisticated leader who is determined to punish the West for supporting those who oppose his rule. Alexander Lukashenko survived an unprecedented wave of protests in the summer of 2020 and despite crippling sanctions from the EU, his regime has managed to survive, and now, backed by the Kremlin, he is striving to teach Europe a lesson. Lukashenko is not the first to use immigrants as a threat to Western European countries. Turkish President Erdogan and Libyan persecutor Muammar Gaddafi have also made similar use of waves of migrants from the Middle East and Africa to Europe in order to put pressure on the union. But Lukashenko's plan stands out for its cynicism and cruelty.
From the summer months, the authorities in Minsk allow one-time entry visas for citizens of conflict-ridden countries, citizens who have nowhere to go and will not usually be accepted in any country, with the purpose of immigrants not staying in Belarus but arriving in Germany. Good and comfortable life for immigrants from the Middle East. But between Salarus and the Promised Land of Germany lies Poland, a conservative country that is deeply embroiled with the European Union on issues, of which immigration is one of the biggest.
Now Lukashenko seeks to drive a wedge, widening the gap between his rivals in hopes of bringing about their collapse, at least in part, reducing external pressure on his dictatorial regime and the union's sanctions on its economy.
In the past week, Lukashenko has escalated the struggle and more than 4,000 migrant labor migrants on Poland's eastern border.
Lukashenko's military is waging a war of attrition that includes loud music, dazzling spotlights and Benyon laser markers to exhaust Polish border guards and allow immigrants to cross the border.
In the face of harsh criticism from the West, Russia has denied involvement in the policy and Lukashenko's, but has made it clear, with a series of military maneuvers that included flying nuclear bombers over Belarus' territory, that they are behind the dictator in Minsk. But despite Russian support, Lukashenko's move may turn out to be a gamble of despair. So far, the EU has defended all of Warsaw's decisions and instead of attacking each other, Germany, Poland and the Baltic states are already considering further punitive measures against Minsk. While Moscow's patience with him erodes and Putin waves the threat of union between Russia and Belarus, Lukashenko's bill may reveal that like the unfortunate immigrants he sent to roam the border forests of Poland, he too is trapped between a rock and a hard place.