‘Unacceptable’: migrants face ‘desperate situation’ at Poland-Belarus border

Children and families among those being warned to go back to Minsk' as police hostility and humanitarian crisis worsens

For two days the same looped recording has been blaring out from speakers on the Polish border: Attention! Attention! Crossing the Polish border is legal only at border crossings."

The ominous warning is directed at the thousands of asylum seekers massed in Belarus on the opposite side of the barbed wire running between the two countries. According to Poland, Belarus's Alexander Lukashenko is deliberately provoking a new refugee crisis in Europe by organising the movement of migrants from the Middle East to Minsk and promising them a safe passage to the EU in revenge for the sanctions Brussels has imposed on his authoritarian regime.