Train with hundreds of Chechnyan refugees from Poland stopped just before the German border

Hundreds of Chechnyan refugees from Poland started on Monday evening at 11 p.m. a rail-journey to the European Parliament in Strassbourg to draw attention to their dramatic situation. The Chechnyan human rights worker Imran Eshiev informed the Society for Threatened Peoples STP (Gesellschaft für bedrohte Völker) on Tuesday of the campaign, which was called a "peace march”. The train with the refugees is now a few kilometres from the German border.

Polish border guards are interrogating them and trying to get them to return. There are in the group refugees who have already been refused asylum three times. Others have been living for weeks on the street because they were given no accommodation. Others were beaten. The most recent of these violent attacks took place just two days ago. There are also several children and women.

The Chechnyan refugees have been wanting to protest at the European Parliament against the requirements of the Dublin Regulation. This agreement provides for the refugees making an application for asylum in the country first entered. When the agreement came into force in 2004 Poland as the most easterly member of the EU was confronted with a sharp increase in the number of refugees.

The refugees describe the conditions in which they live as fraught with social and humanitarian problems. Their security situation is also extremely bad since both the Russian secret service and the allies of the Chechnyan President Ramzan Kadyrov bring great pressure to bear on refugees.