Polish NGO awards activists helping migrants at Belarus border

By Jo Harper

WARSAW (AA) – Activists helping mainly Middle Eastern migrants on the Polish-Belarusian border were honored on Monday with the prestigious Pontfici - Bridge Builder award.

After a press conference held outside the presidential palace in central Warsaw, Adam Bodnar, Poland’s former commissioner for human rights, told Anadolu Agency that the award showed the Polish people also have an obligation to help those in need, regardless of religion, ethnicity, or nationality.

“The president needs to understand that human rights are central to democratic societies,” he said.

The Warsaw-based Club of Catholic Intelligentsia’s prestigious award is given to a person or persons "for their merits in spreading the values of the common good, dialogue and sacrifice for the benefit of others.”

“These values have been recognized as extremely important in the experience of the people of the club,” said the group’s spokesperson, Mateusz Luft.

In later summer 2021, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko started to push migrants mainly from the Middle East over Poland’s border. Polish border guards then allegedly pushed them back over the border, and many died in the dense forests along the border as winter temperatures fell below -10C (14F).

Poland’s ruling Law and Justice Party has been vociferous in its criticism of those seeking to help the migrants, with President Andrzej Duda calling them “people of unsound mind.”

Brussels has been critical of Warsaw’s treatment of refugees on the border, further aggravating tensions between Poland and its fellow EU members.

Poland’s Border Guards have 15,000 people working on the border and spent 1.6 billion zlotys (€350,000) on a 187-kilometer (116-mile) electric fence. This summer, a 5.5-meter (18-foot) wall was finished along the border, but it has not stopped dozens of migrants from crossing into Poland every day.

Since October 2021, the Club of Catholic Intelligentsia has been running a crisis intervention point at the Belarusian border, with over 200 volunteers taking part in 215 interventions and providing humanitarian assistance to almost 1,000 people of 39 nationalities.

On March 25, the police detained a 21-year-old club activist operating on the border.

Four Polish activists from the volunteer group Grupa Granica were also detained by police in March for allegedly helping migrants crossing Belarus’ border into Poland.

Grupa Granica said the activists were providing humanitarian aid to a family with seven children which had been stuck at the border for three months. The group says its activists provided help to people who had already entered Poland.