Protest train

Polish border guards stopped 200 Chechen and Georgian refuguees from crossing the German border on Tuesday. The refugees borded a train to protest the poor conditions of the Polish refugee camps where they live.

Officials stopped the train at the Polish city of Zgorzelec because the refugees lacked the proper documents to leave Poland, a spokeswoman for the border guards said.

The refugees had refused to dismount from the Dresden-bound train for several hours earlier on Tuesday before eventually disembarking peacefully.

The spokeswoman said the aim was to remove the refugees as quickly as possible as both pregnant women and small children were among their number.

The 200 protesters, members of a refugee asylum in the central Polish town of Radom, wanted to go to Strasbourg to highlight what they described as poor living conditions and the slow processing of asylum applications in Poland. They were travelling without train tickets or travel papers according to the border guards.

Refugee status

In Warsaw, Deputy Foreign Minister Andrzej Kremer defended Poland's treatment of refugees.

"We have accepted quite a big number of Chechen refugees and Poland's refugee law is no different to that of other European countries when it comes to granting asylum or refugee status," he told Reuters.

"Most probably the group of people in this train do not have refugee status and therefore cannot travel around the EU. That means Polish authorities have to prevent the demonstration these people wanted to stage (in Western Europe)," he added.

Ewa Piechota, spokeswoman for Poland's Immigration Office, denied the refugees were poorly treated, saying that Poland guaranteed good conditions for refugees.

Poland has taken in Chechen refugees since the Chechen wars fought between rebels and Russia in the mid-1990s. Poles have traditionally been sympathetic to ethnic groups opposed to Moscow's rule.

sjt/dpa/Reuters/AFP
Editor: Trinity Hartman