Increasingly more people from Caucasus illegally crossing Belarusian-Polish border - Border Committee
MINSK. Jan 16 (Interfax) - The number of people from the Caucasus trying to illegally enter Poland through Belarus is growing, the Belarusian State Border Committee says.
"As many as 20,300 people from the Caucasus region traveled to Poland for asylum through the Brest border section in 2012, and the Polish services did not admit 11,400 people and returned them back to Belarus. This is nearly 150% more than in 2011," it said.
"In the first half of January 2013, about 500 people from the Caucasus departed for Poland through the border section in Brest, and 306 of them were returned," it said.
"According to information possessed by the Brest border group, the number of people from the Caucasus registered in the Brest region has significantly increased in the past years. This trend can be explained by their desire to get to Poland to be granted refugee status. They are sure that entering the European Union is the best chance for them to improve their living conditions," it said.
"Many have repeated such attempts five times and even more. Only one-third of them accomplish their goal. The rest are stubbornly continuing their attempts. All of them, sometimes whole families, are passing through the checkpoints without Schengen and Polish visas. All standards consider them to be potential illegal migrants," it said.
"It is those who have lost all hope that resort to illegal border crossing. There are not too many of them so far. Three out of every five people detained at the Brest border section for illegally crossing the border come from the Caucasus. Brest border guards stopped 46 of them at the green checkpoints last year. Polish border guards also have enough work," it said.