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Crisis in Belarus

PACE president calls for settling migration situation at borders with Belarus

More than 14,000 migrants have reportedly tried to illegally cross into Poland from Belarus since August

PARIS, October 8. /TASS/. President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) Hendrik Daems calls for settling the migrant situation at Latvia’s, Lithuania’s, and Poland’s borders with Belarus, the PACE press service said on Friday after his three-day visit to Poland.

"Mr Daems particularly referred to the critical situation on Poland’s border with Belarus, specifically referring to Assembly Resolution 2404 (2021) on ‘Instrumentalised migration pressure on the borders of Latvia, Lithuania and Poland with Belarus’," it said. "The PACE President condemned the situation and called for it to be urgently addressed "in a holistic, integrated manner through the means of enhanced regional and European co-operation, while fully upholding human rights and humanitarian principles as well as refugee law and the right to seek asylum".

More than 14,000 migrants have reportedly tried to illegally cross into Poland from Belarus since August. Most of the attempts were stopped by border guards. Warsaw places responsibility for the situation on Belarus, which, as the Polish side claims, receives migrants and then sends them across the border to Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia, seeking to provoke a migration crisis in Europe.

Meanwhile, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said in late May that his country had served as a barrier to the flows of illegal migrants to the European Union but, given the current ramped-up Western political pressure against Belarus, Minsk warned that it could stop performing this function.

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