THERE is a barbaric competition going on in Europe and the European Union isn't willing to put a stop to it. Belarus and Poland are trying to outdo each other in being inhumane.
The EU, which often claims to be the exemplar of human rights, is helping Poland to be barbarous.
Caught in between are thousands of refugees, mostly from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, countries where the weapons of the West have made such escape necessary. Neither Minsk nor Warsaw will allow the refugees in. Both seem to be content with leaving the refugees, many of them women and children, exposed to extreme cold for weeks in a narrow strip of land.
Nine people have so far died in the sub-zero temperatures. Where is your heart, Minsk, Warsaw and Brussels? Granted, Belarus and Poland are happy to be heartless, but Brussels? What with human rights embedded in the founding parchment of the EU. This is a shame.
True, there is ample evidence indicating that Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko is the architect of the refugee crisis. But this isn't reason enough to deny the vulnerable a decent shelter in Poland or anywhere else in Europe as their applications for asylum are processed.
The EU must first help provide the refugees shelter. Helping Poland to deny refugees entry to Europe makes the EU complicit in the death of every refugee. Nine deaths are enough.
The EU must not aid an inhumane Warsaw. Instead, Brussels must punish it like it is doing to an inhumane Minsk. Media are reporting refugees being driven by Belarusian troops to the Polish border. They are threatened with violence if they should turn back. And those who somehow make it into Poland tell the media of how they are brutalised.
According to The Guardian, humanitarian workers are not allowed to administer aid to the refugees on the Polish side of the border. Journalists, too, are not allowed there for fear that the truth will be out. An inhumane act is an inhumane act, whether it is carried out by Lukashenko's troops or those of Polish President Andrzej Duda.
There are already four rounds of sanctions on Belarus. A fifth is on the way. Josep Borrell, the EU's foreign policy chief, told the British newspaper recently that Brussels was imposing sanctions on Belarus because it was "standing up to the instrumentalisation of migrants for political purposes". How about standing up to Poland for its instrumentalisation of migrants for political purposes? If the British newspaper is right, Duda is, Donald Trump-like, erecting walls at the border. And guess what? The EU is ready, willing and able to fund the walls. Wanting to please Poland's Duda, European Council President Charles Michel, seated next to a beaming Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, told a press conference in Warsaw on Nov 10 that such funding was legally possible.
Belarus is now Europe's Mexico and Duda its Trump. With friends like Duda, the EU doesn't need any human rights enemies. Why the shift in EU's policy, after saying no to such barrier financing for years? Has illiberal Poland made Brussels illiberal? The EU's human rights charter is beginning to look like a mere exhibit to be hung for display in Brussels' gallery. If the EU wants to be Fortress Europe, then it shouldn't venture outside. It is hard to be insular and humane at the same time.
