Zadarko, head of the Polish Bishops’ Conference Council for Migrants and Refugees, said media reports of aggression against refugees and migrants had increased over the past year.
He attributed this trend mainly to politics and ideology, saying some political representatives seek to build support for their parties by exploiting fear and hostility towards foreigners.
He said hostility towards people arriving from Ukraine is fuelled by references to unresolved historical grievances and by criticism of benefits granted to war refugees by the Polish state after the start of a full-scale war in Ukraine.
Zadarko said most of those benefits were temporary measures intended to help refugees integrate into Polish society more quickly and have already been withdrawn, but they continue to appear in what he described as propaganda narratives.
He also said the Polish public is being flooded with videos and photographs, mainly from Western Europe, showing people from Africa or Arab countries causing damage in the streets, setting cars on fire or attacking passers-by.
He warned that such material is often presented without context, with no information about who the people are, where exactly they come from or why they are behaving in that way.
He said accompanying comments suggest that similar events will soon happen in Poland. He described this as a “frighteningly cynical” form of migration prevention.
“An attitude of hospitality means making a conscious decision to move towards a society in which there will be a significant number of foreigners. However, this does not mean opening the borders to everyone without thinking, but rather making a conscious effort on the part of both those who receive newcomers and those who are received to build a common future,” he said.
Referring to Western European countries, he said it was not enough simply to give newcomers jobs and wait passively for them to integrate.
He called for regulations that would both make the host society more open and set specific requirements for newcomers, including the possibility of requiring people to leave if they do not accept those requirements.
He said Church documents make clear that migrants and refugees have both rights and obligations towards their host country. These include learning the local language and respecting the culture and laws of their host country.
The comments were made ahead of the World Day of Migrants and Refugees, observed by the Catholic Church on the last Sunday of September.
The day is intended to encourage Christians to take responsibility towards migrants and to remind Christians of the need to cooperate in addressing migration-related challenges.
(sp)
Source: PAP