Jelinek, Muller, Alexijewitsch, Tokarczuk: Nobel Prize winners appeal to EU

“Let’s not take our eyes off the tragedy!” This was stated in her open letter addressed to the President of the European Council Charles Michel, the President of the European Parliament David Sassoli and members of the European Parliament.

“The Polish government imposed a state of emergency on the border strip between Poland and Belarus, on the basis of which it refused to help the sick and dying in the border area to doctors and paramedics and prevented the media from accessing the tragedy that was going on there,” the four authors wrote in the letter published by the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” .

Compliance with the Geneva Refugee Convention

However, even incomplete and fragmented information gives insight into the huge extent of the humanitarian catastrophe occurring at the EU borders. We know that people there are subjected to the harsh procedure of being pushed back and exposed to hunger, exhaustion and hypothermia in the swamps.”

The authors appealed to EU institutions “to comply with the decisions of the Geneva Refugee Convention and, in particular, to grant access to the asylum procedure to all those who request it and are detained at the EU’s eastern borders.”

Demanding a “diplomatic initiative”

They called for “a large-scale diplomatic initiative in the countries of the Middle East to counter the misleading narrative of the Belarusian regime, which aims to bring as many desperate refugees as possible to the Polish-Belarus border (…)”. They also called for “aid organizations that can provide medical and legal assistance to be allowed to enter the border area.”