The problem is highly difficult, and affirmative scenarios cannot be seen, although the scale of this problem is grotesquely tiny on the Belarusian border. It is inactive something like a kiboli smoke after a game, where not only stones, coirs and even knives go in motion, but castets, baseball bats and machetes, and "aggressive groups" are far more numerous. There are no troops, no grids and no buffer zones around the stadiums. There are police prevention units whose officers, yes, are injured in clashes. Police are effective without fatalities and without causing waves of social hysteria. The last specified wave around the kibola was caused by the erstwhile PO/PSL government with a memorable and completely unfulfilled "we are going after you" of the minister of the time, present the Euro MP. The problem is not serious in itself.
And yet it does seem impossible. If something makes it impossible to solve the problem of migration, it is about policy mechanisms, not about physical inability and the Polish example shows it – as much as grotesque. due to the scale.
1. The dams and push-backs are counterproductive, regardless of what we think of the "recipes" and how we would like to deal with them.
With people crossing the border, we can want to do anything – push them abroad, “repel”, send them to Madagascar or shoot them all, and sale them in parts on the organ market, we can yet (which in Poland almost nobody wants) according to the law and simple humanitarianism to keep them in the centers, verify their identity, or accept asylum applications and consider them (if not). However, specify the intent of the border operation – the essential elements of its strategy do not service and cannot service its purpose.
Dam
It is 1 of the elements of this strategy. She was expected to seal the border. It's like a sieve. Evidence and quantitative data are provided to us in this matter, e.g. Germany, who sometimes uncover well over a 1000 people, who have been hit by the Belarusian-Polish trail. It should be added that Germany can uncover more cases of migration without closing any closed zones, without setting fences and dams, without engaging the army and without hysteria, than we, who have founded a war on ourselves in the heads and in the woods. I see no reason why a large state would set up specified fortifications due to the "attack" of respective 1000 people – but let it be – let's say that a dam is truly needed.
It stands in Polish territory, but practically on the border line. This gives control of the eastern, and so the delicate side of the dam straight into the Belarusian hands. The barrier is freely accessible by the Belarusian borderers and OMONs, leading people and e.g. crews with levers bending barrier rods. Polish officers have no physical means of operating on the east side of the dam to prevent its methodical destruction. Standing on the west side of the fence, they're completely helpless. This was shown most dramatically by the tragic situation with the killed Polish soldier. The killer turned to his heel and calmly left, and Polish soldiers could only stand and watch. Their actions were impossible – even informing shots, due to the fact that they would gotta fall on the Belarusian side. In this very way and unfortunately only in this way, the barrage works. It does not defend the border from breaching it, but only hinders the activities of the services, while endangering their officers.
Set at least 200 m deep into the Polish territory, equipped with crossings and crossings allowing services to operate on the east side, the dam inactive – but incomparably more effective than before – would slow the movement of people crossing the border, allowing them to halt them all without much effort. These people should definitely be detained, since the border exceeds, in violation of Polish regulations, and can be (and indeed are) dangerous. besides shots (not only warning) would be possible. Returning to the border besides – although this solution is the least sensible of all, would take place at least after recognition has been established.
Push-back
It was meant to be a "do not let in" and is an essential component of the "Polish strategy". I don't want to discuss this. As it seems, the vast majority of Poles do not want to let anyone in here present and any letting anyone in. Well – this has been mentioned here – but these people get to Germany for example. No – these are not those who have been allowed in and who have been ‘out’ of the centres during the examination of their applications. They were mostly the ones who went through the dam and managed to escape the guard. individual may have smuggled them in. We don't know that, but it would be all the more dangerous, due to the fact that human smugglers mostly have alternatively not customers, but their slave victims. By pushing a man across the Belarusian border, we frequently do so even without asking about identity and country of origin, but we never verify this data in any way. Like the fence, we besides give these people into Belarusian rule, losing control of them and not even knowing who they are. In the same way, we treat people who are harmless and dangerous – equally. We're expected to be "doing nothing," we're not. So we're tough and the polls show that we're happy about it. but we're completely ineffective.
So we push out "recipients", having first of all almost 100% assurance that they will return and effort again. Almost due to the fact that those who managed to last push-backs and accompanying torture are returning. These people just have no choice. Whatever the motives of their escape from the country, in whatever way they found themselves in Minsk – under the Polish border they are just fighting for their lives.
The Border defender claims that 80% of migrants are young men, frequently aggressive, in compact groups, not curious in global protection in Poland. I have a tendency not to believe the SG, due to the fact that the SG has quite a few tortured lives on his conscience. But what the SG is talking about seems likely to be the consequence of this completely uncontrolled situation. The brutality of the service gives emergence to aggression. The threat forces us to join groups. The demonstrated aggression is in the interests of the services of Belarus and Russia that are hostile to us. So I accept this data without any hesitation, although to the bare eye these are estimates completely “on the eye”. Activists say that 70% of the thousands of people who went through their hands intended to apply for protection, and they manage to file them only in individual cases, which, by the way, does not exclude push-back. But of course it can be assumed that any of these 70% are just pretending to be good will and that activists are besides judging “by eye”. It's okay. It's okay.
If SG data is false, it's inflated. However, taking them as a good coin means that the remaining 20% are also people. Who? Ano – families with children, women, aged people. No – I do not appeal to ethics, law and humanitarian ban on treating civilians, including children and their mothers. It is known – “there is war” and “where the wood is chopping, there are chips.” Like, without trying on, in Palestine... No – I am inactive looking only from the applicable position of implementing the "do not let" proposal. due to the fact that the most effective "not allowed" are people from this 20% group.
Secondly, if the intent of Putin and Lukashenko's operations is to smuggle dangerous people into the EU, then ways have long been in place and, as should be thought, are inactive being used. It's a whole, gruesome, separate chapter. Here, let's just say that real smuggling of possible "green men" and real large-scale human trafficking takes place in a different way from the forest routes of the green border. It is adequate to mention that even the Ukrainian border is better suited for this than the Belarusian border, that the entry from Belarus of TIR etc. remains for use.
Thirdly, and most importantly, I inactive assume, at least in labor, that 80% of the "attacking borders" are dangerous people, trained in the camps Putin and Lukashenko. However, as illustrated by the example of a soldier's killer – sending him abroad does not origin the threat to disappear. Rather, it becomes more serious. This man has been on Polish territory respective times. besides in the hands of Polish services. We pushed him, and present we don't really know who he is. We gave it to Lukashenko “for reuse.” He came back and killed me. If the 80% are indeed dangerous people, the more they should be stopped. If push-backs work, it's only for 20% of the weaker and no threat. In another cases they are a warrant of our deficiency of control over possibly dangerous people – we give them to Lukashenko as if we were saying, “Keep playing, brother, play us.”
‘Repeating’
But not only the “do not let” call for “push-backs”. Scaring is expected to be an equally crucial part of the strategy, little eager to be mentioned publicly, due to the fact that it would be equally public to admit that we are knowingly acting unlawfully and inhumanely. That we simply deliberately torture people to set an example and blow the Africans' head off the thought of travelling through Poland. To "dry the origin of the problem".
From this point of view, Agnieszka Holland's movie should look forward to strong promotion in Africa and the mediate East, not condemnation in Poland. However, it should be assumed that anyone in Somalia, for example, has a chance to watch this movie – or 1 of Tusk's press conferences. As in the times of the Law and Justice, we complained about the deficiency of activity of Polish diplomatic services in "countries of origin", so small is heard about this activity today. However, if the nightmare at the border scares away, it is mainly families with children, or those 20% according to the SG’s “estimations”. All right, everybody's frightened off. But how good? For the safety of the Polish border? Or for the propaganda effect in Poland? To calm the Polish souls burning to white with the wildest xenophobia and straight demanding that with all impertinence we dull all the "puppies"?
And what does it mean on this occasion, for example, that a 1000 more will appear in the place of 1 “let”? Who is this, the “let”? Is it 1 of the tens of thousands who have reached Germany over the years? Could individual be detained by the Polish services and placed in the centre?
So what's truly going on here? Money? In utmost cases, it may be about them too, but this is politics... Inside.
2. The motive behind the “border security” policy is not the “hybrid war”, but only the Polish-Polish war. This is the main origin of the insolence of the problem.
There is simply a very small, completely marginal group of people in Poland, to whom I myself belong and who admit that erstwhile governments cannot be compared with those present and that differences can besides be seen at the border – but who is convinced that, as it should have been, as opposed to erstwhile power due to lawlessness and many examples of thoughtless cruelty, so for precisely the same very fundamental reasons, it is impossible to be a supporter of the present power. For many, the breakthrough was the buffer region and the last initiative on "unrestricted shooting".
This is simply a very hard situation – possibly hopeless. While it could be said of the Law and Justice Governments that any another power that can be constructed in the existing strategy of real political forces would surely be better, it can be said with equal certainty present that any imagined change of power would be a change for the worse. There is no exit from this wedge another than utopian dreams of a completely fresh policy and exchange of all 560 present parliamentarians.
This clinic causes paralysis of social activists, media people and yet voters. Klinkz had existed for a long time and both parties – PiS and PO – willingly utilized it, knowing well that whatever they do, voters would stay faithful to them. There has always been a phenomenon of programme convergence of 2 fighting camps, competing for the same electorate (or even 5% of it, which will find the outcome). But this convergence has never yet gone so spectacularly, it has never been followed by specified large emotions and the threat of "our defeat" has never been so great.
This "real policy" is constantly accompanied by polling and election numbers. Politicians seem to have no exception but to believe that any "concession" for fundamental principles of law and fundamental human rights will bring a reaction and success to the utmost right, which can indeed be observed in Poland and Europe in the form of successes of Marine Le Pen, AfD and many another utmost right-wing environments. If a cynically cold analysis of the manifestly ineffective "border defence" strategy shows that it is about pure PR and that nothing else can simply be going on, this does not mean that recovery will happen erstwhile this PR is abandoned. It won't. For quite a few different reasons. Indeed, abandoning killer PR has all chance of losing. And truly – whoever rules will be subject to the same pressure. Not "immigration pressure" but the force of the component shouting about betrayal and about the invasion of "pulls". all power in this substance must act the same. possibly there were opportunities. But “our power” let the genie out of the bottle. It's already swept.
The current and inactive demonstrated political consequence of liberals to populism and migration is so besides about trampling human rights with ostentatiousness even greater than they have done and are willing to do populists. A change of policy towards migrants in any civilised or simply rational way does not seem possible, not for external reasons or for any nonsubjective reason, but only (or at least mainly) for politically interior reasons. That's what you gotta face. In Poland, where migration problems be only in the hysterical sphere of the imagination – erstwhile we see messages “started” and “they will rape our women” erstwhile we see a photograph of respective black men waiting peacefully at a agrarian bus halt for a gathering with the Border Guard, which they themselves notified of their presence there. And in another European countries where migration problems are real and very frequently blamed.
It does look like Mission impossible. But there are besides threats at stake, like in disaster movies. It is not the “invasion of the cadapats” that the threat lies. It is that – whether Putin will invade Poland, for example, after Trump's triumph in the United States is facilitated, or not – we will live in a planet arranged according to Putin's and Trump's rules.
3. A social fact in Poland is not only the approval of evil, lawlessness – but besides authoritarianism. It's a totalitarian readiness. It has not happened in past before that no 1 has been able to benefit from specified readiness.
IBRiS has granted the Republic of Poland approval to extend the right to shoot “in defence of borders”. The question was as vague as the provision of the proposed bill quoted therein. It was not known, therefore, to what cases of the usage of weapons we are to licence from now on. However, it should be assumed that 86% of us consider that any (for any respondents most likely all) of the embarrassing barriers should be removed immediately. If 1 can even consider what is the worst misfortune in Poland, erstwhile innocent people endure cruelly and die on the border, erstwhile fresh films are inactive circulating, like the 1 late with the unconscious girl pulled out of the infirmary and thrown through the barrier – the worst misfortune is the consequence of the survey. It means consent for the evil of the crushing majority of us and a declaration of support for each government and all its deeds, so that the government is "ours." It is simply a state of full readiness not only authoritarian – besides totalitarian. As always in past so and this time this readiness is manifested in an artificially created or actual threat. As usual in history, so this time it is accompanied by various psychiatric phenomena – denial of facts, compensatory rationalization of own denials of logic and denials of values.
Among the people who have late decided to put on Tusk, sincerely admiring him and even in love with him, psychology creates an impossible situation. It is impossible to believe that our idol behaves and possibly thinks precisely as those hated, whom he has just managed to overcome according to all the hopes we had in it. So we'll do everything we can to deny the facts and love him still, no substance what he does.
There is inactive no good research, but it should be thought that most Poles consider a group of migrants crossing the Belarusian border to be a threat to Poland and the Union, regardless of the scale of what is truly happening there. We are almost all convinced that in the interests of Poland and Europe it is in the interests of stopping the migratory force at any cost. Poles are besides certain that “a 1000 more will appear in the place of 1 allowed”; that either push-back or let everyone in; that there is simply a war going on, so ethical assessments should be excluded in this situation. That the Geneva Conventions and another norms are inadequate to both the scale of the phenomenon and the previously unknown methods of the "hybrid war" and should not be taken into account.
With ethical standards, therefore, fundamental legal standards go into the garbage – specified as the 1 to treat prisoners of war as humanely, or the 1 which requires the consent to usage an armed and armed army against civilians in the country in accordance with the procedure laid down in the Polish Constitution, alternatively than “on order” or in a regulation. This is not only thrown into the trash by Kowalski, but besides by Adam Bodnar – the same steadfast Ombudsman, whom I presented with tears of emotion a statue of "Standing in the Name of Principles".
The state disassembled by the Law and Justice is so losing the last social support that the voters of the democratic parties have always seen. The biggest and most dramatic change of views has late occurred among them. We support “our” support for the principles has evaporated.
Such a violent change can be treated as superficial and so easy reversible, but putting hope in a chief alternatively than in a political or systemic alternate characterized us for a long time – especially on the democratic side. The roots of authoritarian readiness are deep and have been within us for a long time. present it only turned out that this is besides totalitarian readiness. So it seems almost impossible to reverse this phenomenon.
It is besides hard to imagine present both the forces ready and able to undertake the task of change and the chance to do so. Among high-ranking politicians, the last to effort something like this (effectively) was Maria Kaczyńska, publically kneeling before a exile from Chechnya who lost children in the forests of the Polish border. At that time, the temper was reversed – but we never saw anything like it in Poland again.
4. Putin and Lukashenko's actual objectives of the “hybrid war” are different from human smuggling or attacking the tightness of borders. These another goals Putin and Lukashenko have already achieved.
The attack of missile, armored and aviation troops does not prepare on the green border. That's evidently bullshit. Green people can be helpful, but that's not how you smuggle them. It's not the border that's the mark of a hybrid attack. This is the state and its attitude. This attack worked.
A hybrid attack is expected to origin panic. And sowed. It's expected to be chaos and uncertainty. Both in societies and in state services. He besides planted.
The current Polish policy may have 1 rational sense. possibly he shows Putin that in this situation he does not necessarily enjoy the parties of the far right, that he may besides benefit from the hated centre liberals. Well, maybe. That's what he'll come to see. I'm not at all calm about the score.
As in any policy, Putin and Lukashenko besides have interior goals. This becomes clear erstwhile you see films from the border recorded in the East and from the East distributed. They show – to the satisfaction of east satraps – how human rights truly treat hypocritical Western democracies. Unfortunately, these films are not a lie.
5. Ethical evaluation, concrete and applicable effects should be suspended.
The choice between “border security” and respect for human life and dignity is not from my world. But in my world, respect for another views, another choices and another emotions – even if completely false – is besides part of the ethical centre of politics. In this way, as an idealistic human rights defender, I besides defend the rights of enemies of these rights. And I have no problem with that.
Not all the hysterias of the far right are empty. In relation to the full "multi-kulti" policy which the right mocks, liberal Democrats have fallen into the snare of their own policy of thoughtless negligence and taboo of the political correctness that they have indeed imposed. The celebrated “no go” zones can truly exist, there are many akin problems. Each 1 considered calmly would indicate appropriate recommendations, as would a calm, logical analysis of the actual effects of firewalls and push-backs. But there was no specified conversation – not since yesterday, erstwhile there was a threat of populism and fuel that the expected hordes provide. There's never been a conversation. Liberals are not prepared for it, they are utilized to ending the substance with the cry of a “racist!” and present they show in all lengths the helplessness erstwhile they themselves are to “fuck the dummies” due to the fact that that is what polls and investigation suggest.
For all these reasons, present we should abandon the bloated mines and moral values, focusing on logic and applicable solutions to problems – and real ones, and those imagined or artificially created. Tell the fact without censorship – fact not filtered by its own ethical sieve. The problem must be addressed together with “them” – with voters of those who are politically our enemies. This is the only way to free the problem from political interests.
Don't panic. Or moral enhancements. You can't do polls without debate. We request to appeal to another democratic mechanisms. For example, for debates on expert data and expert recommendations conducted not in political, interesting campaigns, but among random, statistically typical attempts of "normal citizens" who have no political interest. If this could be done by making it clear to supporters of both hostile political camps that their leaders are creating problems alternatively of solving them, possibly we would end the crisis on the border, and the Polish war which triggered it completely independently of Putin's plans with Lukashenko.
I'm trying to describe Mission impossible And I know that. However, I compose this by preparing to return to the forbidden “buffer zone” to yet stand trial and show lawlessness, evil and nonsense of all this border absurdity. I compose erstwhile I wake up in the country where they spit on me for this reason not only the fellow citizens of the right, but besides my fellow Democrats. In a country that has become hostile not only to the “pulls”, but besides to me. The state and its government are hostile to me. Enemies are average citizens. In front of people like me, there's no another way. Mission impossible.
