German police said today that they forced a far-right group to leave an area of the German-Polish border they had tried to patrol to prevent migrants from entering the country.
The group with more than 50 members had a bayonet, a machete, batons and tear gas, the police said, adding that they confiscated those weapons and forced them to leave the area of the city of Guben, in eastern Germany, Reuters reports.
The group is believed to support the far-right Third Time party, which is suspected of having links to neo-Nazi groups.
The Third Time party called on members to "take action" against the entry of migrants from Poland into Germany.
In Guben, a town right on the border, dozens demonstrated yesterday against the announced far-right patrols.
"We don't want to leave the region to neo-Nazis. We want to set an example that asylum is and will remain a human right," said the organizers of the protest.
German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said today that authorities on the border with Poland have deployed an additional 800 police officers to control the flow of migrants entering the European Union from Belarus.
Seehofer said last Sunday that Germany had no intention of closing the border with Poland, but later indicated that Berlin may have to consider reintroducing controls.
Many EU member states accuse the Belarusian government, headed by the authoritarian president Aleksadr Lukashenko, of encouraging migration to the EU countries, thereby justifying the sanctions imposed by Brussels on Minsk.
The number of migrants trying to enter the EU from Belarus began to rise after the Union imposed sanctions on Lukashenko's government over last year's presidential election in Belarus, which Brussels considers stolen, and the crackdown on opposition supporters that followed.
Lukashenko rejects the accusations and blames the West for a possible humanitarian disaster during the coming winter, when migrants are likely to be stuck on the Belarusian-Polish border.
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