Refugee families with children with disabilities expelled from Poland to Belarusian border
An archive photo
MINSK, 5 October (BelTA) – Poland now expels refugee families with children with disabilities, the State Border Committee of Belarus told BelTA.
According to the Belarusian border service, Poland violates international legislation by refusing to help refugees, who flee wars in fear of their lives. Women and children, including children with disabilities, are not an exception. In addition to refusing special treatment and medical care to disabled children with serious illnesses Poland drives their families to the Belarusian-Polish border. Two cases have been registered in the area controlled by the Brest branch of the Belarusian border service.
A Belarusian border patrol came across a large family from Iraq on 1 October. One of the kids had infantile cerebral palsy. The father said he had been carrying the child in his arms all the way hoping that his son would get the necessary treatment and a chance for a normal life in Europe. However, instead of human compassion and in violation of the child’s rights Polish law enforcement officers delivered the entire family to the Belarusian-Polish border and tried to force them to illegally cross the border into Belarus.
A screenshot from a video released by the State Border Committee of Belarus
A similar thing happened to an Iraqi family with two disabled children. The woman said both children have autism. They need the special care and education that Iraq lacks. Despite the mother’s appeal for permission to stay in Poland for the sake of the children’s treatment the Polish border service did just what they had done to the previous family stuck between a rock and a hard place.
“By expelling refugees with disabled children, Polish law enforcement agencies deprive them of the rights the European Union is supposed to honor. Apart from that, since human rights activists are not allowed to visit the Polish border international organizations focusing on children rights also remain indifferent to lives and health of the kids, whose rights the organizations actively fight for but in reality only with words,” the State Border Committee of Belarus stressed.
