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Poland has become the latest European country to start building an anti-refugee wall, with a new fence on its border with Belarus.

The 2.5-metre high wall would be modelled on one built by Hungary on its border with Serbia in 2015, Polish defence minister Mariusz Blaszczak said.

"We are dealing with an attack on Poland. It is an attempt to trigger a migration crisis," he told press at a briefing near the Belarus frontier on Monday (23 August).

"It is [also] necessary to increase the number of soldiers [on the border] ... We will soon double the number of soldiers to 2,000," he added.

"We will not allow the creation of a route for the transfer of migrants via Poland to the European Union," he said.

The minister shared photos of a 100-km razor-wire barrier, which Poland already erected in recent weeks.

Some 2,100 people from the Middle East and Africa tried to enter Poland via Belarus in the past few months in what Blaszczak called "a dirty game of [Belarus president Alexander] Lukashenko and the Kremlin" to hit back at EU sanctions.

"These are not refugees, they are economic migrants brought in by the Belarusian government," deputy foreign minister Marcin Przydacz also said on Monday.

Some people were pushed over the border by armed Belarusian police who fired in the air behind them, according to Polish NGO Minority Rights Group.

Others were pushed back by Polish soldiers, who should have let them file asylum claims, while another 30-or-so people have been stuck in no man's land without food or shelter.

"People were asking the [Polish] border guards for protection and the border guards were pushing them back," Piotr Bystrianin from the Ocalenie Foundation, another Polish NGO, told the Reuters news agency.

"That means they were in contact and that means they should give them the possibility to apply for protection ... It's very simple," he said.

"We have been very concerned by ... people being stranded for days," Shabia Mantoo, a spokeswoman for the UN refugee agency, the UNHCR, also said.

But for its part, the Polish government had little time for moral niceties.

"The statements and behaviour of a significant number of Polish politicians, journalists, and NGO activists show that a scenario in which a foreign country carrying out such an attack against Poland will receive support from allies in our country is very real," Polish deputy foreign minister Pawe Jaboski said.

Belarus has also been pushing refugees into Lithuania and Latvia, with more than 4,000 people recently crossing into Lithuania.

"Using immigrants to destabilise neighbouring countries constitutes a clear breach of international law and qualifies as a hybrid attack against ... Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and thus against the entire European Union," the Baltic states and Poland said in a joint statement on Monday.

Lithuania is building a 3-metre high, 508-km wall on its Belarus border in a 152m project for which it wants EU money.

The wall would be completed by September 2022, Lithuanian prime minister Ingrida Simonyte said on Monday.

"The physical barrier is vital for us to repel this hybrid attack," she said.

The latest upsurge in wall-building began with Greece, which said last week it had completed a 40-km fence on its border with Turkey to keep out potential Afghan refugees.

And Turkey has started building a 3-metre high concrete barrier on its 241-km border with Iran for the same reason.

"The Afghan crisis is creating new facts in the geopolitical sphere and at the same time it is creating possibilities for migrant flows," Greece's citizens' protection minister Michalis Chrisochoidis said.

Turkey would not become Europe's "refugee warehouse", Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoan said.

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Poland to build anti-refugee wall on Belarus border - EUobserver

'We have zero state or federal assistance to help pay for this burden,' Hudspeth County administrator says

by: Sandra Sanchez

Deputies with the Hudspeth County Sheriffs office and U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials help to carry the remains of a mid-30-year-old migrant woman from El Salvador who was located 20 miles north of the Rio Grande on Saturday in remote West Texas mountainous terrain. (Photo by Joanna MacKenzie/Hudspeth County)

McALLEN, Texas (Border Report) Rescue crews found the body of a migrant woman from El Salvador during the weekend in a remote desert area in Hudspeth County, the second migrant body found in a week and 13th so far this year, the director of county emergency services told Border Report.

The woman was in her mid-30s and it was a recent death, said Joanna MacKenzie, the Hudspeth County Emergency Management Coordinator and County Administrator.

The retrieval caps an unprecedented year of migrant deaths for the remote West Texas county with a population of under 5,000, limited resources and limited body bags, she said.

The remains of a woman from El Salvador were found near a tree Saturday, Aug. 28, 2021, where backpacks and other remnants were left in remote West Texas in Hudspeth County. (Joanna MacKenzie/Hudspeth County Photos)

MacKenzie was among a group of first responders who hiked over three hours Saturday in what she called high desert mountains in rough terrain to locate the body. It was 20 miles from the Rio Grande on a trail frequently used by coyotes who lead migrants through dangerous and remote terrain to pick up locations near Interstate 10 in West Texas, about 100 miles east of El Paso.

Backpacks, clothing, plastic bottles left behind by travelers riddle the ranch, MacKenzie said. It took over three hours just to reach her body. It is No. 13 year to date.

The discovery of the Salvadoran woman by Hudspeth County Sheriffs deputies and U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials came after a CBP officer on horseback found the skeletal remains of another migrant Wednesday in remote terrain in Hudspeth County, MacKenzie said.

And MacKenzie said they fear more bodies will be discovered as the triple-digit heat from a few weeks ago has been replaced by cooler 80-degree temperatures, according to the National Weather Service.

It is a year of crisis, her county declared as it backed Texas Gov. Greg Abbotts heightened border security plans in early summer. But she says they have yet to get financial relief.

Gov. Greg Abbott on Monday extended the disaster declaration, which now includes 43 Texas counties that locally declared a disaster and agreed topartner with the state to arrest and detain people for crimes related to the border crisis. Hudspeth County is included in the renewed disaster declaration.

She also worries that a recent Supreme Court decision forcing the Biden administration to re-implement the Trump-era Migrant Protection Protection Protocols program known as Remain in Mexico could push more migrants to try to make the dangerous crossing north through Hudspeth County.

We anticipate another uptick with improved weather and hunting season where hunters find remains out and about, MacKenzie said.

Further hurting this community is the fact that we have zero state or federal assistance to help pay for this burden, she said. Not to mention the mental and emotional burden of bagging the body of someone who was healthy and young, or the ranchers on constant patrol on their own land.

Adding to the emotional turmoil, this weekend MacKenzie said the county could not find enough body bags to be used for the migrant remains. The only bags we could get were paper thin. Literally had a body fall out, she said.

She said they finally procured body bags with handles so that groups of first responders could carry the bodies since the bodies are most often hiked out and not just put on a gurney, she said.

Photos taken by MacKenzie and supplied to Border Report show crews hiking through prickly pear and other cacti in rocky mountainous terrain to extricate the bodies.

She said it costs the county about $3,000 per recovered body in first responder and overtime costs and other related expenses. She said that the county had a budget of $12,000 but the county has already spent almost $40,000 on migrant remains so far this year.

Sandra Sanchez can be reached at Ssanchez@borderreport.com.

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Migrant deaths in high desert of West Texas take emotional toll on crews tasked with recovering remains - Border Report

Since the pandemic began, migration in India has gained a negative connotation. But the problem may not be migration itself, but the fact that large chunks of migrants come from source states or regions that are facing acute economic distress. In the destination areas, there is the problem of finding jobs with dignity, coupled with states that are politically driven to keep migrants out. It may fall on the private sector, as much as the government, to figure how to change this if India has to sustainably grow. What can be done in terms of corporate policy and labour policy to improve livelihoods?

The latest edition of Indian Express Thinc, presented by Omidyar Network India, focused on this subject, starting with thoughts from keynote speaker Meher Pudumjee, chairperson of Thermax Limited. In September last year, Thermax joined hands with like-minded corporates across Mumbai, Pune and Ahmedabad, in partnership with NGO Dasra, to launch an initiative called SoCo or Social Compact to ensure greater dignity and equity for industry-employed informal workers in India. The initiative aims at assuring certain standards for the workforce, including safety at the workplace and social security cover.

Speaking about SoCo, Pudumjee said it mainstreams the aspiration that a responsible business is equal to a successful business.

SoCo aspires to address a million informal workers spread across the ecosystem of 150 companies in India. It started as a pilot phase with just 15 companies. Its a self-driven journey by companies who are committing to ensure a set of standards for their workforce, Pudumjee said, citing the example of health insurance, which is usually set for a minimum of one year, despite the fact that some employees stay for only six months. How can companies ensure that they get insurance for that period?

Similar concerns set the tone for a panel discussion, hosted by Udit Misra, Deputy Associate Editor, The Indian Express, which followed the keynote speech. Pudumjee was joined by Rajiv Khandelwal, founder of Aajeevika Bureau; Manish Sabharwal, chairman of TeamLease; Radhicka Kapoor, fellow at ICRIER and Deepak Mishra, professor at JNU.

Mishra, who has recently come out with an edited volume on contemporary migration in India, shed light on whats holding back employment generation for migrant workers. He stressed on the fact that migration flows in India are incredibly diverse and there are specific patterns of vulnerabilities associated with them.

The first thing for a policy maker is to move away from a generalised description of migrant workers to look at the specificities of groups of migrant workers and how they are incorporated in the larger labour market, he said.

Policy makers will have to start with addressing structural vulnerabilities in origin areas, not to reduce or to stop migration, rather to have evidence to argue that minimal targeted interventions, like investment in rural health and education, improve the bargaining power of migrant workers.

Assessing the impact of Covid on Indias already strained migrant workforce, Kapoor said that it was the circular migrant who bore the brunt last year.

Kapoor was looking at cross-country studies which show that productivity in urban areas is about 7-8 times that of productivity in rural areas. The High Powered Expert Committee (HPEC) on Urbanisation in 2011 made an observation that despite this relatively high growth, the Indian economy had witnessed less urbanisation that would have been normally expected at that level of growth and development. This meant that while people were moving to cities, the ability of the cities to actually absorb this labour force productively was limited.

She explained, Basically the ability of the manufacturing sector to exercise a pull away from the agricultural sector has been weaker than normally expectedso where were people being employed? They were either ending up in the construction sector or informal services sector. The fact that basically cities were generating relatively lacklustre employment opportunities meant that much of this migration was circular and reverse in nature and not permanent.

Looking at what policies are needed to change the situation, Sabharwal said that the tool available is structural productivity of our regions, sectors, firms and individuals. He said, Urbanisation is an unstoppable and actually a powerful technology for prosperity. Urbanisation isnt shoving more people into [existing cities]. Its creating more cities with more than a million people. We need better cities is the debate hereMy submission is that we have run out of fiscal room and all those solutions may not solve the problem. Lets just focus on making our cities better and structural changes to the Indian economy

Khandelwal, the founder of Aajeevika Bureau, which has collaborated in SoCos initiatives, pointed out that if Covid added to an existing migrant crisis last year, this year people went back to cities quickly, warnings were not heeded and people got jobs. There was no employment crisis. It is actually a wage, quality of work and work condition crisis, which already existed, and that has continued, he said. The changes are that wages are down, number of days of work are down, a number of markets that were hosting waged workers have moved to piece-rated work. The minimum wage crisis continues to unspool, too.

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Thinc session examines need for jobs with dignity for migrants in urban areas, policy changes needed - The Indian Express

A version of this article first appeared in the "Reliable Sources" newsletter. You can sign up for free right here.

On this day of history, with America's war in Afghanistan officially over, I asked a cross-section of journalists and activists to weigh in on what's next. Pretend to be an assignment editor, I said, and answer this question: "With the US officially leaving Afghanistan, what's the No. 1 angle that needs to be covered now?"

Here are the answers:

>> CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr: "Humanitarian relief. I think it's central to everything. We know the Taliban need it to come into the country and it's a potential lever for the new 'diplomatic' agenda for President Biden. And it may be the only way the people survive."

>> Paul Rieckhoff, founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America: "The plight of the Afghan people. And especially our Afghan allies who are in particular grave danger under the Taliban. They are terrified about being left behind. They are more terrified about being forgotten. Biden may say the war is over. It's not over for them."

>> PBS "NewsHour" special correspondent Jane Ferguson, who flew out of Kabul just a few days ago: "Can the Taliban hold onto control over Afghanistan, or will everything descend into chaotic civil war and failed state? Because if it is the latter -- similar to Somalia in early 90s -- US troops will be back in some capacity, and a major migrant crisis and humanitarian catastrophe will be the result. What happens with Taliban rule/strength will determine the global implications of the fallout of this drawdown over everything else."

>> Philadelphia Inquirer national columnist Will Bunch, an outspoken critic of America's involvement in "forever wars:" "Whether America can complete a shift away from more than 20 years of failed militarism and reap a peace dividend by curbing Pentagon spending."

>> Commentary associate editor Noah Rothman, an equally outspoken critic of Biden's withdrawal decisions: "I would definitely be focused like a laser on US passport holders trying to get out. But also the Pentagon's effort to gloss over legal permanent residents -- people with jobs, families, homes, and bank accounts here. To say nothing of visa holders and visa eligibles. It all adds up to a number the administration hoped to elide, but my suspicion it is in the thousands. And I don't suspect the press will need prodding to cover their stories. My strong suspicion is that they will be too horrible to ignore."

>> The Nation publisher Katrina vanden Heuvel, a longtime opponent of the US war effort: "Will media look at next wars, endless, in the world -- from Syria to Iraq to Africa? Will there be a new cohort of media-savvy analysts to speak to rethinking of a new security/foreign policy agenda? Also, who is the new Barbara Lee? Where is the new generation of diplomats, especially those with a knowledge of the Middle East? And how will the Biden team challenge The Blob?"

>> Joseph Azam, a lawyer and Afghan-American immigrant who serves on the board of the Afghan-American Foundation: "What happens to the people left behind? Depending on how you cut the data, there may be upwards of 1 million of them. American and coalition allies; at risk individuals and their families; Americans, Afghans, other nationalities. The withdrawal has a large wake, we can't even begin to see what's caught in it, but someone needs to be in the water to tell those stories."

>> Committee to Protect Journalists board chair Kathleen Carroll, former exec editor of The AP: "What will history tell us about the end of this 20-year war and can we see that now? Can we pull back the stick from the chaos and heartache and betrayal on the ground and look for what there is to be learned for us as a society, a nation, a people? Can we only see the important moments long after the fact? Or is there a way to see them when they are happening and explore their meaning in our coverage?"

Sky News has the FT and other papers here. The NYT's banner headline says "U.S. FORCES LEAVE KABUL; EVACUATION ENDS." WaPo's is three big words: "America exits Afghanistan."

-- NYT Mag contributing writer Matthieu Aikins: "Good morning, Kabul. The last US troops have left Afghanistan, and the Taliban control the airport. Today is the first day of a new and uncertain era."

-- Al Jazeera's Charlotte Bellis: "Famous Taliban saying changes tense. You had the watches, we had the time."

-- LA Times photog Marcus Yam: Taliban fighters stormed the Kabul airport "wielding American supplied weapons, equipment & uniforms -- after the U.S. Military have completed their withdrawal. Fighters celebrated with gunfire & chants through the night."

-- Yam's colleague Nabih Bulos posted video of fighters entering a hangar and examining US helicopters.

-- BBC's Lyse Doucet: "The last American soldier leaves but the last battles aren't over..."

The-CNN-Wire & 2021 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.

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The war is 'not over for them:' Reporters, activists urge press to stay focused on Afghan civilians - wlfi.com

This content was published on August 28, 2021 - 21:13August 28, 2021 - 21:13

By Phoebe Fronista and Stelios Misinas

ATHENS (Reuters) - Hundreds of Afghans marched to the U.S. Embassy in Athens on Saturday, making a plea to the international community for peace and holding banners reading, "Afghanistan is bleeding" and "hands off our land."

Following the Taliban's takeover of the country earlier this month, U.S. troops have begun their withdrawal from Kabul airport, after a two-week scramble by Washington and its allies to fly out their nationals and vulnerable Afghans by a Tuesday deadline set by President Joe Biden.

As it neared the end of a 20-year military engagement in the country, the United States said it had killed two Islamic State militants planning attacks in Afghanistan, following a deadly suicide bombing outside Kabul airport on Thursday.

"We are tired of war, we are tired of violence, we are tired of seeing dead bodies. We all came here together, we want peace from the world, we want to end this war," said Omey Naziam, 24, who joined the peaceful protest in the Greek capital.

Other protesters shouted, "stop killing Afghans" and "we want justice."

Greece was the frontline of a migrant crisis in 2015 when more than a million people, most of them Syrians, Afghans and Iraqis, arrived seeking refuge. Many of them still live in Greek camps, waiting for their asylum applications to be processed.

Fearing new migrant flows from Afghanistan, Greece has completed a 40-km fence on its border with Turkey and a new surveillance system was in place to stop possible asylum seekers from trying to reach Europe.

"We are here in order to be the voice of voiceless people in Afghanistan that are trapped," said Parwan Amiri, 17, who lives at a migrant camp outside Athens and whose parents and sister are still in Afghanistan. "More than ever we are thinking that we don't have a land, we don't have a homeland."

European Union home affairs ministers will hold a special meeting on Tuesday to discuss the latest developments in Afghanistan and its consequences for security and migration in the 27-nation bloc.

(Writing by Angeliki Koutantou; Editing by Leslie Adler)

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'We want peace from the world,' Afghans protest in Athens - swissinfo.ch