More than two weeks after an announcement that it would take journalists to the border area with Belarus in an organized manner, Poland is keeping foreign media waiting for access.
Warsaw – More than two weeks after an announcement that it would take journalists to the border area with Belarus in an organized manner, Poland is keeping foreign media waiting for access. The background to this is the crisis surrounding migrants at the EU’s external border. So far, only representatives of the press with Polish citizenship have traveled to the area, a spokeswoman for the border guards told the German press agency on Friday. “All applications from foreign journalists are subject to an additional review”. Concrete deadline commitments could therefore not be made. Representatives of the government-critical Polish media also complain that they have not yet been taken into account in the organized trips.
For weeks, thousands of migrants and refugees have been trying to get from Belarus across the EU’s external borders to Poland or the Baltic states. The EU accuses the authoritarian Belarusian ruler Alexander Lukashenko of targeting people from crisis regions to Minsk in order to smuggle them into the EU.
At the beginning of September, Poland imposed a state of emergency for a three-kilometer-wide strip along the border for three months, journalists and aid organizations were not allowed in. This met with broad criticism. When the state of emergency could no longer be extended at the beginning of December, Interior Minister Maruisz Kaminski made use of a new law and imposed restrictions on freedom of movement for the border strip, which are largely similar to the conditions of the state of emergency. While helpers remain locked out, journalists can request an organized tour from the border guards. (dpa)
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