Warsaw, Poland – Wearing a pointy swimsuit, Rafal Pankowski, the amicable head of By no means Once more, a famend Polish anti-racism organisation, delicately sips an Arabic espresso within the bustling centre of Poland’s capital, Warsaw.
Town is gripped in political fervour as Poland heads right into a basic election on October 15. Vibrant political posters line the streets, and campaigners thrust leaflets at pedestrians having fun with the final throws of heat climate.
There’s “little question” that migration is the subject dominating the election campaigns, Pankowski says firmly.
The fitting-wing populist authorities elected to energy within the 2015 elections exploited the refugee crises to advertise a relentless marketing campaign of “xenophobic propaganda” that painted non-European refugees and migrants, particularly from the Center East, as “terrorists”, Pankowski had previously told Al Jazeera.
Recalling his earlier assertion, he says it comes as little shock that the ruling Regulation and Justice (PiS) get together and the far-right Confederation alliance have continued to push this narrative through the present election marketing campaign to garner assist amongst their current voter base.
Polish PM Mateusz Morawiecki receives on-line backlash after he prompt the France’s violent protests have been because of immigration ⤵️ pic.twitter.com/bfjOnmtkGO
— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) July 3, 2023
He says the dialog round migration in Poland has modified dramatically prior to now three years as two totally different refugee crises have erupted on the nation’s western borders.
Considered one of them started in October 2021 and has seen hundreds of refugees and migrants, primarily from the Center East and sub-Saharan Africa, try the crossing from Belarus whereas the opposite started in February 2022 when Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, sending tens of millions of Ukrainian refugees into Poland.
The primary disaster was seized upon by right-wing events, which integrated it into an current propaganda narrative geared toward producing worry over an “invasion” of non-Europeans.
When the second refugee disaster arose, there merely was not the identical backlash. In distinction, assist for Ukrainian refugees was felt throughout the political spectrum.
Nevertheless, Pankowski has been stunned by a shift in rhetoric over current months among the many right-wing events to incorporate anti-Ukrainian sentiments.
In an extra sudden twist, different events exterior the right-wing political spheres have tried to “outdo one another”, Pankowski says, by supporting a agency response to non-European refugees and migrants getting into the nation.
![A photo of a crowd of people and four policemen holding them back.](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Medyka.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C513)
A movie sparks a heated political debate over migration
Rafal Wasowicz, a stocky, straight-talking workplace employee, stands exterior a sublime artwork home cinema.
He has come to see the Inexperienced Border, a movie directed by veteran Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Holland concerning the Poland-Belarus border disaster, which has sparked the ire of Poland’s right-wing events, with Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro evaluating the movie to Nazi propaganda.
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“I feel this movie exhibits the truth greater than the federal government,” Wasowicz says. “They are saying we’re at struggle, however the authorities doesn’t see the migrants as folks.”
The movie focuses on a household from Syria and a girl from Afghanistan who’re aggressively pushed backwards and forwards by border guards and troopers as native activists danger being despatched to jail for making an attempt to convey them to security.
Rights abuses have lengthy been reported on either side of the border as Polish border guards and police routinely push these in search of asylum within the European Union again into Belarus, in line with civil society teams and grassroots organisations engaged on the border.
Al Jazeera has spoken to a number of individuals who have tried the crossing since 2021 and have reported multiple human rights violations towards them by each Polish and Belarusian authorities.
![Belarus Syria](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Yousef2.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C513)
The fixed backwards and forwards within the usually damp, freezing border forests have led to not less than 37 deaths since October 2021, in line with activists, however the true toll is feared to be far increased.
The federal government, in flip, has positioned itself as defending the nation from a hybrid struggle being waged by Belarus.
Belarusian authorities, primarily through vacationer companies within the Center East, have been discovered to have promoted misinformation campaigns providing a route into the EU through Belarus.
This was considered by Poland and the EU as a technique by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, the closest ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, to destabilise the area.
Poland’s authorities plans to run adverts to defend its remedy of migrants and refugees crossing from Belarus earlier than screenings of Inexperienced Border.
Deputy Inside Minister Blazej Pobozy, who describes the movie as “disgusting slander”, instructed reporters: “Our advertisements present the context of the hybrid [border] operation and the course of this operation and what options now we have launched to safe the security of Polish men and women.”
Anti-migrant and -refugee rhetoric throughout the political spectrum
It’s not simply the right-wing events stoking fears of mass migration from non-European, primarily Muslim nations.
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Former European Council President Donald Tusk, chief of the centrist opposition Civic Coalition, slammed the present authorities in July for involvement in an EU migration plan that he says would “permit much more folks to come back from nations like Saudi Arabia, India, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Nigeria and the Islamic Republic of Pakistan”.
In a collection of social media movies posted in July in reference to unrest in France triggered by the police killing of a 17-year-old teenager of Algerian and Moroccan descent throughout a site visitors cease, Tusk concludes: “Poles should regain management over this nation and its borders.”
![Poland](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/DSCF7768-1695475897.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C513)
In an sudden twist, the governing get together, which had lengthy promoted its powerful migration insurance policies, was lately embroiled in a scandal by which its operatives in consulates, particularly in Africa and Asia, are reported to have handed out Polish visas for bribes.
The Civic Coalition seized the chance to discredit the ruling get together, with Tusk describing it as “the most important scandal of the twenty first century in Poland”.
An increase in anti-Ukrainian sentiment
Pankowski says the far proper is now selling a worry that the tens of millions of Ukrainian refugees within the nation are threatening a Polish “mono-ethnic state”.
“For the primary time in a really very long time, Poland has grow to be a rustic of immigration slightly than emigration,” he says, which represents a seismic demographic change in a rustic the place 10 years in the past, simply 0.3 p.c of the nation was born overseas.
![Poland](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/DSCF7751-1695475635.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C513)
Now, the hashtag with the slogan “Cease the Ukrainisation of Poland”, promoted by the Confederation alliance, has been trending on social media, and Pankowski’s organisation has obtained nearly day by day stories of hate speech directed at Ukrainian youngsters in colleges.
He says a racist trope centring round teams of non-European male refugees and migrants being a sexual menace to Polish girls has been reversed.
With martial legislation in place in Ukraine, males 18 to 60 years previous could not go away the nation, which implies nearly all Ukrainian refugees are girls and kids.
“The stereotype is that Ukrainian girls are on the market to steal your husband,” Pankowski says.