I must admit it, however ironically, however painfully. I must acknowledge that the Poles really cannot open their border to all those Middle Eastern refugees that the Belarusian dictatorship is sending to Minsk with the promise of an easy route to the European Union.
If the Poles were to open their doors, even just a little, they would soon be overwhelmed by a growing flow of men, women and children. So they have to – don’t they? – deploy barbed wire. Except…
Except that on the border between Belarus and Poland, the temperature is so low that these refugees are freezing to death, in the true sense of the word. They are not cold. They are freezing to death, but human drama or not, the Poles could not give in to this moral blackmail without encouraging other Kurds and Syrians to believe in the Belarusian illusion.
“A la guerre, comme à la guerre”, except…
Except that these people who have already fallen for the Minsk promise can do nothing but try to enter Poland anyway, because the Belarusian border guards obviously do not allow them to go back. They repel them ruthlessly and, in the face of such inhumanity, the Poles had to – did they not? – deploy some 17,000 border guards and soldiers to ensure that no refugees could slip under the barbed wire.
According to Varsovie, not only do their 26 EU partners not have to be concerned about this, but by co-financing the wall that the Polish Diet has just authorised to be built they would only be defending our common border .
This would be – wouldn’t it? – a mere sign of solidarity between Europeans, of solidarity with a dictatorship that is putting its cynicism on display. Except…
Except that Mr. Lukashenko, irony aside, has already won his bet by making Poland and the Union fall as far as he has.
This Poland, which so generously welcomes Belarusian refugees and supports them in their fight for freedom, this Poland which sounded the death knell of communism in 1980 after having never stopped fighting it since 1956, is now showing a total lack of solidarity towards other people fleeing misery and death.
Not only is Poland betraying itself and is even betraying all feelings of human compassion and thus the Christian faith to which it so predominantly claims to belong, but here the European Union as a whole is complicit in the crime of failing to assist people in danger.
So eager to defend and advocate its values, the Union is allowing this ping-pong of human beings to take place on the Polish-Belarussian border because it wants to avoid multiplying the subjects of conflict with Warsaw, because the Commission and the Parliament are well aware that the hosting of refugees is not exactly popular in the European public opinion and that, on this subject, a test of strength with the Polish leaders would not necessarily turn out to be to the Union’s advantage.
So, I don’t know about you, but, personally, I am ashamed.
I am ashamed that a dictatorship can so easily ensnare us in our contradictions. I am ashamed that the Polish opposition can find almost nothing to say against this reconstruction of a wall in the heart of Europe.
I am ashamed that the Union is collectively so afraid of refugees if they are Muslims. I am ashamed that we cannot find a way to make Mr Lukashenko understand that such games must stop. I am ashamed of my own powerlessness and of the fact that I understand better and better, in today’s world, how the world of yesterday was able to bury its head in the sand and close its ears facing Hitler and Stalin.
