Syrian asylum seekers flee Poland after being transferred to open detention centre

4 Syrians who utilized for worldwide safety in Poland left the nation as soon as they have been transferred from a closed detention centre to an open one, says the Polish border guard, which stresses that this isn’t the primary time that “procedures have been exploited [by asylum seekers] to journey illegally to the West.”

The boys have been moved to a facility with decrease safety ranges – the place they might depart and are available again to the premises freely – after they staged a starvation strike towards circumstances within the unique detention centre the place they have been being held and the shortage of progress in processing their instances.

Some refugees at their former centre in Lesznowola are nonetheless on a starvation strike that started over a month in the past. Human rights teams say that it isn’t shocking they search to flee Poland on the first attainable alternative given the circumstances they’re held in.

“It’s not the primary time [that] refugees submit their utility for [international] safety and declare that they wish to lead a traditional life however after a few days they’re gone,” Anna Michalska, a Polish border guard spokeswoman, instructed the Polish Press Company (PAP).

Launching protests has change into a option to facilitate their departure from Poland, mentioned Michalska, including that the refugees are unwilling to barter and easily wish to depart the closed centres. “It [then] seems that they wish to get to open centres solely to journey to Germany.”

The Syrian nationals in query – who’re among the many 1000’s of individuals from the Center East to have crossed into Poland from Belarus since final 12 months – began refusing to return for meals in late April. On 5 Might they have been moved to an open centre and on 11 Might they “weren’t in Poland anymore”, mentioned Michalska.

Kalina Czwarnóg from the Ocalenie Basis, an NGO that helps migrants and refugees, instructed Notes from Poland that asylum seekers being held in Polish detention centres do typically “flee as quickly as they’ll”.

However “after the hell made for them by the Polish border guards within the forest and later within the centres”, she says she can not blame them. “If I have been of their sneakers I would go away a rustic that’s utilizing violence towards me the primary probability I might get.”

One other activist – who requested to stay nameless – from Grupa Granica, one other help NGO, shares Czwarnóg’s evaluation. “They’ve left as a result of they couldn’t think about functioning in Poland anymore,” he instructed Notes from Poland.

“From the perspective of those males, Poland is a county that doesn’t respect their rights: they have been welcomed with weapons on the border, delivered to a detention centre with unacceptable circumstances, and the place their rights weren’t revered,” he provides.

The workplace of Poland’s commissioner for human rights, a state physique, has additionally documented and condemned the “unacceptable” circumstances in detention centres for asylum seekers. Final month it issued a report noting that the “humanitarian disaster on the [Belarus] border continues”.

The Polish authorities, nevertheless, argue that circumstances on the services meet authorized necessities and respect the wants and rights of these detained. In addition they argue that closed centres are wanted in lots of instances as a consequence of safety dangers introduced by some who’ve crossed the border

The federal government has additionally taken a tricky method on the border itself, together with banning all non-residents – even journalists and NGOs – from the realm and constructing a wall. It has typically pushed border crossers again into Belarus, a coverage that has in two cases been discovered by Polish courts to have violated the legislation.

Important picture credit score: 16 Dywizja Zmechanizowana/Flickr (below CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)