Poland Votes for Live Ammunition To Repel Migrants at Border — While French Left Urges ‘Respectful Welcome’

Polish parliamentarians, in a first for modern Europe, have voted overwhelmingly to allow soldiers and border guards to use live ammunition to repel migrants trying to break into the country from Belarus. The 401 to 17 vote in favor comes after a migrant stabbed a 21-year-old soldier to death last month at the border.The lopsided vote comes as attitudes in Europe harden against the visa-less migrants, generally young men from impoverished Muslim nations. In a similarly uneven vote, Finland’s parliament voted 167 to 31 last week to empower border guards to forcibly return to Russia any migrant arriving without a valid visa.Finland and Poland, both majority Christian countries, accuse Russia of masterminding a policy to flood their countries with refugee-seekers from the predominantly Muslim south — Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. To advance this policy, Belarus opened travel agencies in Iraq and offered the Eastern European country as a point of transit into the EU, Reuters reported three years ago from Iraq. The ultimate destination is usually Germany, Europe’s richest major nation. Two weeks ago, Reuters reported from Warsaw that a senior Polish official told reporters that Poland is asking Germany, Greece and Finland to send border police to Poland to help cope with the growing numbers of migrants at the border.On Poland’s eastern border, Belarusian government agents bus migrants to the metal fences and give them industrial strength wire cutters. Last year, 26,000 migrants made it across, about a 50 percent jump over the previous year.As a result, Poland has closed four of its six border crossings with Belarus. This month, videos show migrants engaged in pitched battles with border guards, who often take shelter behind shields. With clashes happening daily, the new legislation exempts public officials from liability where they use weapons in self-defense or “pre-emptively” when the “life, health and freedom” of law enforcement officials are threatened during an “unlawful attack.” On June 13, Poland imposed a one-mile wide exclusion zone for the hottest 40-mile section of the border. For the rest of the summer, reporters and human rights workers are banned from this zone. Before Warsaw’s final vote on live ammunition, Amnesty International criticized the bill as “unlawful.”It said: “These proposals set a dangerous precedent for the regulation of the use and potential abuse of firearms in Poland and should be rejected. Under international law and standards, the use of force against individuals must be strictly necessary and proportionate to the threat posed.”Poland, Finland, and Lithuania accuse Russia of waging “hybrid warfare,” by pushing economic refugees into their countries. Last fall, 1,300 people came into Finland from Russia without visas. This prompted Helsinki to close all of its eight land crossings with Russia. Since March, only one crossing has been recorded.More broadly, the threat from Russia and its satellite Belarus is prompting Poland to spend 5 percent of gross domestic product on defense next year, the highest portion of the 32 NATO member countries, Poland’s foreign minister, Radek Sikorski, told Bloomberg TV last week. Polish officials say they are building Europe’s largest land army.In the area of migration, Poland’s vote to allow border guards to shoot to kill is part of a wider polarization of European attitudes towards economic migrants from the Muslim south.In France, much attention was given last week to a left wing “victory” in the second round of National Assembly elections. In reality, the grouping that won the most votes was Marine Le Pen’s National Rally and her allies. This group won 10.1 million votes, or 37 percent of ballots cast. Compared to the 2022 National Assembly elections, the alliance more than doubled its share of the national vote, from 17 percent two years ago. Votes cast almost tripled, a phenomenon pumped up by a high turnout — 66 percent of registered voters.Mme. Le Pen and her party’s new president, Jordan Bardella, take a hard line on immigrants: ending immigration, closing legal routes for illegal immigrants to legalize their status, a national ban on the hijab, the closing of “radical” Mosques, the speedy deportation of dual passport lawbreakers, and ending the practice of extending citizenship to anyone born in France. French citizens should have priority over immigrants for housing and jobs.“If I become Prime Minister, I will put forward in the first weeks an immigration law that will make it easier to expel delinquents and Islamists, and I will do away with the birthright law,” Mr. Bardella told Le Parisien last month. Mr. Bardella, the 28-year-old son of Italian immigrants, has bolstered youth support for the National Rally. Across Europe, young women increasingly complain that they feel unsafe walking at night through neighborhoods with large immigrant populations.Reflecting Europe’s polarization over immigration, the left-wing party expected to dominate France’s next parliament, the New Popular Front, has policies diametrically opposed to Mme. Le Pen’s.France should send boats into the Mediterranean to offer migrant boats from North Africa “a respectful welcome,” the left says. Once on land, all migrants should be given free housing, free medical care, and assistance with visa applications. France also should welcome “refugees from climate change.”The left-wing New Popular Front secured the most seats — though not a majority — in the French National Assembly, where they are expected to dictate many policies by dominating an anti-National Rally coalition.It is unclear whether the New Popular Front will last. The group was named to evoke the anti-fascist Popular Front of the 1930s. The Communist-Socialist party alliance governed between 1936 and 1938. The political turmoil of those years is blamed for leaving France unprepared for the Nazi invasion of May 1940.

Poland Votes for Live Ammunition To Repel Migrants at Border — While French Left Urges ‘Respectful Welcome’

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