The Polish government has claimed that Middle Eastern migrants on its border, used as pawns by the Lukashenko regime in Belarus, are using children as propaganda in their efforts to penetrate the eastern borders of NATO and the European Union.
“Propaganda plays a huge role in Belarus’ actions against Poland, which is to force [Poland] to submit to Belarus’s intentions and to put pressure on the government to agree to the migration route. Children and women are mainly used in these psychological activities against Poles,” wrote Stanisław Żaryn, official spokesman for the Minister-Coordinator of Special Services at the National Security Department of the Chancellery of the Prime Minister of Poland, Mateusz Morawiecki, on social media.
“Migrants are instructed on how to use children to try to cross the border,” Żaryn alleged, sharing screenshots of messaging app conservation in Arabic which he quoted as providing such advice as “Take the kids, hug them, look dirty and tired.”
“Other entries concern the use of children to produce propaganda material. ‘Friends in the forest need a child who can comment on a video that will be sent to organizations.’ This is how the Belarusian security services play with our emotions,” the Polish statesman claimed.
Migrants are instructed on how to use children to try to cross the border. "Take the kids, hug them, look dirty and tired." 2/3 pic.twitter.com/7DfE0r8DBn
— Stanisław Żaryn (@StZaryn) November 9, 2021
Amid violent clashes between migrants and over 10,000 border guards, police officers, and soldiers including activated reserves sent to the frontier by the Polish government on Monday, Żaryn was clear that crisis on the border with Belarus, lead by Aleksander Lukashenko’s quasi-Stalinist government, was “a result of the deliberate escalation of tension by the Belarusian side.”
“There are large groups of migrants in the area of our border, which are fully controlled by the Belarusian security services and army,” he accused in an official government statement, noting that “Similar hostile actions are [being] taken against Lithuania and Latvia.”
Belarus is at odds with the EU, of which Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia are members, over sanctions the bloc has placed on the former Soviet Socialist Republic, following a variety of offences including the hijacking of a commercial passenger jet flying from Greece to Lithuania by Belarusian warplanes.
It is believed to have engineered the escalating border crisis by flying migrants in direct from the Middle East to Minsk, and then driving them to European Union’s eastern frontier in what the bloc and NATO have described as a “hybrid attack”.
Current situation on the Polish-Belarusian border. We are dealing with organised destruction of border fortifications. There are also direct attacks on Polish Border Guards officers, police and soldiers. https://t.co/XS3Ec6dej7
— Chancellery of the Prime Minister of Poland (@PremierRP_en) November 8, 2021
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