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Minsk says Polish serviceman seeking political asylum in Belarus

It is mentioned that the member of the service asked for political asylum because he disagreed with Poland’s policy regarding the migration crisis and the practice of inhumane treatment of the refugees

MINSK, December 17. /TASS/. A member of the Polish armed forces, who was posted on the border with Belarus, has asked for political asylum in Belarus, the country’s State Border Committee said on Friday.

"The member of the service asked for political asylum in Belarus as he disagreed with Poland’s policy regarding the migration crisis and the practice of inhumane treatment of the refugees," the committee said.

The man was stopped by a Belarusian patrol on December 16 and said he served at the 11th Masurian Artillery Regiment of the 16th Pomeranian Mechanized Division "Casimir IV Jagiellon," whose units had been deployed to the border with Belarus, according to the committee.

Refugees flocked to the border of Belarus with Poland, Latvia, and Lithuania starting earlier this year. Things took a sharp turn for the worse on November 8 when a few thousand people, including migrants from the Middle East and Africa, approached the Polish border from the side of Belarus. Some of them attempted to break through into Poland by tearing down a barbed-wire fence. Polish border guards repelled almost 40,000 attempts at illegal crossings of the border with Belarus, 400 times as many as a year earlier.

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