From the Washington Post news section:
Poland completes Belarus border wall to keep migrants out
By Vanessa Gera and Kirsten Grieshaber | AP
June 30, 2022 at 7:17 a.m. EDTWARSAW, Poland — A year after migrants started crossing into the European Union from Belarus to Poland, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and top security officials visited the border area on Thursday to mark the completion of a new steel wall.
…The Polish government characterizes the wall as part of the fight against Russia; human rights defenders see it as representing a huge double standard, with groups of white Christian refugees from Ukraine made up mostly of women welcomed but predominantly male Muslims from Syria and other countries rejected and mistreated.
Perhaps this can help explain:
Syrian man: | Ukrainian woman: |
“The first sign of the war in Ukraine was (Belarus President) Alexander Lukashenko’s attack on the Polish border with Belarus,” Morawiecki told a news conference.
“It was thanks to (our) political foresight and the anticipation of what may happen that we may focus now on helping Ukraine, which is fighting to protect its sovereignty,” Morawiecki said.
As Poland opened its gates to millions of Ukrainians fleeing Russia’s invasion, work was well underway to build the 5.5-meter (18-foot) high wall along 186 kilometers (115 miles) of its northern frontier with Belarus. It still needs electronic surveillance systems to be installed.
It’s meant to keep out asylum seekers of a different type: those fleeing conflict and poverty in the Middle East and Africa, who were encouraged to try their luck by Belarus’ authoritarian regime — a close ally of Russia — as part of a feud with the EU. …
A play that premiered in Warsaw this week, “Responsibility,” asks how Poland can accept millions of Ukrainians while withholding help to thousands of others.
Thousands, I tell you, mere thousands would come if the borders were open.
One character asks: “Why does the Polish state demand that a child from Aleppo sits in a bog in sub-zero temperatures and withhold the aid it gives the child from Mariupol?”
It’s racist for Poles to feel neighborly toward Ukrainians, whose ancestors were subjects of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, rather than toward random foreigners.