Poland offers safety from wrath of Putin

Date: 30/09/04

AT 6.15 in the morning, an express train bound from Minsk to Warsaw arrives at a small border station in Terespol, on the border between Belarus and Poland. It is full of refugees from Chechnya. They have left the war, given up their homes, almost all their possessions and the only life they knew.

Anything, they say, is better than waiting in Grozny for the Chechen holocaust. To live, they had to take the risk. The passengers find themselves at the threshold of the European 'heaven' but it is only the threshold. The customs officers and border guards appear on the platform.

In September alone, more than 300 Chechens submitted applications for refugee status in Poland. Since the beginning of 2004, there have been over 3,700 such applications nationwide and 600 of these have already been positively approved.

"Our guards have received 1,400 applications concerning 3,500 people," says Lt. Col. Andrzej Wojcik, a spokesman for the Border Guard Regional Office from Chelm in eastern Poland. "Whole families apply," he adds.

To get the status of a refugee, the applicant must prove persecution in his or her native land. "The Chechens have been decimated by the Russians for 600 years," says a man from one of the refugee camps near Warsaw, refusing to be identified. "Is that not sufficient proof of persecution?" he asks.

Usually, after a dramatic turn of events in the Russian-Chechen war, or some new act of terror, there is a surge in refugees from the Caucasus knocking at the gates of Poland and the Baltic republics. Such was the case after the tragedy in the Moscow Dubrovka Theatre. So it is now, after the Beslan school massacre.

Recently, an increasing number of Chechens wishing to settle in the EU has crossed the border in Terespol. In just one weekend this month there were more than 300 of them.

The Belarussian authorities turn a blind eye to this exodus. The regime of Alexander Lukashenko, the Belarus president, does not like the world beginning on the Polish side of the Bug River and is resentful of the recent reprimands voiced by Chris Patten, the EU's external relations commissioner, and by members of the European Parliament. The Belarussian media claim that the refugees are passing on to the European Union a nice mess: the germ of some future terror.

In the aftermath of the Beslan incident, President Vladimir Putin stirred up diplomatic turmoil on both sides of the Atlantic by announcing that he would wage war on terror all over the world.

The statement was perceived by some as a potential threat to the democracies neighbouring Russia.

Further strengthening of Russian presidential powers ensued.

Janusz Wilga, a political scientist at the European College in Krakow, does not think that there is any reason to panic. "One should not interpret declarations of state leaders too literally," he says.

"No open conflict is endangering Europe. Yet, it is obvious that Moscow will not extend its blessings to those EU states that grant political asylum to the Chechen refugees.

"This phenomenon is politically uncomfortable for the Russians: it will be a constant reminder of the unfinished war in which, undoubtedly, the total infringement of human rights is taking place. Moreover, among the refugees, some wanted terrorist might sneak across the borders," says Wilga.

When Shamil Basaev, the notorious Chechen rebel, took responsibility for the tragedy in Beslan, people's attitudes shifted discernibly in Terespol.

"Perhaps the newly arrived people are innocent, yet no cause can justify killing children," insists one of the inhabitants of the small border town. "We do not want them here."

The Polish Bureau for Repatriates and Foreigners has a budget of 30 million zlotys (around 7m euro). The money spent on the escapees from Chechnya alone is in excess of 22m zlotys (around 5m euro) per year.

"We shall have to ask the European Union for help in solving this problem," says Ryszard Kalisz, the Polish minister of the interior. However, the bureau can offer the displaced persons only 800 family shelters.

New refugee camps have to be built. Two of them are being erected in Biala Podlaska and Przemysl at an overall expense of some 20m zlotys (4.5m euro), providing 1,500 temporary homes.

But not all of the Chechens wish to stay in Poland forever; they crave a life in the 'real West'. Some of them try to leave the country with their applications still pending.

Many of them are then stopped as illegal immigrants in western Poland and Germany.

Since Poland's accession to the EU, the number of illegal immigrants has increased significantly.

The border guards have caught as many in the first eight months of 2004 as they picked up in the whole of 2003.

"The attempts to cross the border illegally are better organized than before 1 May 2004," Andrzej Wojcik says.

In an attempt to reach a better world, the immigrants pay intermediaries up to €8,000 per head. These would-be migrants are not motivated by politics or ideology. Their goals are purely economic. They are seeking better lives.

Poland has for years been preparing for the protection of the eastern border of the EU. Some €60m from the EU funds has been invested together with 140m zlotys from the state budget.

New equipment has arrived. The times when the peak of modernization of the border guard in Poland was a fax machine in the commander's office are long gone.

Infrared telescopes, radars and encrypted communications are now standard. Observation can be carried out at night, in snowstorms and dense fog. The special detectors can reveal an intruder from hundreds of metres away, without compromising the observer.

Even Apache Indians have been hired to help train the Polish guards - teaching them how to read human tracks and identify the routes of smugglers and illegal immigrants by material evidence they leave behind.

"We're getting cleverer and better equipped," says Wojcik. "But smugglers respond with new ways of reaching their goals. The growing prosperity of the country will attract a greater number of the illegals. Illegal immigration is the problem of the rich world."

• Wieslaw Horabik is a freelance journalist based in Poland.

Article reports on the increase in Chechen refugees seeking admission to Poland.