Fifty far-right volunteers, armed with hot spray, bayonets, machetes and bats, were stopped by German police shortly before the border with Poland, world news agencies reported. The group headed to the furrow to prevent migrants from entering the country. Authorities seized the group’s weapons and forced them to leave the area of the border town of Guben.
Earlier, several dozen locals held a vigil to protest against voluntary extremist patrols. German authorities have deployed an additional 800 police officers on the border with Poland to control the flow of migrants from Belarus to the EU.
About 5,700 people have entered Germany illegally from Poland since the beginning of this year, according to data from the German Interior Ministry. Last week, the German interior minister wrote to his Polish counterpart, Mariusz Kaminski, proposing joint patrols at the common border amid growing migratory pressure. Poland will “fully support” such measures, Kaminski told him.
At the same time, German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer called “legitimate” the desire of European Union countries to defend their borders against the background of the massive influx of migrants, AFP reported. The agency recalls that the interior ministers of 12 EU countries – Bulgaria, Austria, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia – asked in a letter to the EC to finance the construction of border fences.
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