Opposition party members see no reason to support state of emergency

Three politicians from the main opposition Civic Platform party said on Friday that they saw no reason to support the introduction of a state of emergency in the border areas with Belarus.

The Sejm (lower house of parliament) is planned on Monday afternoon to debate the president's decision to declare a state of emergency.

Under the state of emergency, restrictions can be placed on public access to information and recording of the situation at certain locations via technical means.

MPs Tomasz Siemoniak and Bartłomiej Sienkiewicz from the Civic Coalition (KO), the biggest opposition group in parliament, and Civic Platform MEP Radosław Sikorski (former ministers of defence, internal affairs and foreign affairs, respectively) organised a press conference on Friday on the crisis on Poland's eastern border and the state of emergency.

According to Sikorski, "journalists even report on events during wars."

"In the 1980s, information about what was happening reached us from Afghanistan because journalists were there. Journalists should report on what is happening at the Polish border, even more so in times of peace," he added.

Sikorski pointed out that the government had not yet called upon the EU’s border agency, Frontex, which is based in Warsaw, for support.

He said that Frontex was an agency that provided assistance to Lithuania and other countries and had the technical ability to determine what was happening on the border.

"My office contacted this agency yesterday and to this day an application for support has not been received," he said.