It started with a violent crime. In June, in the centre of Torun, central-north Poland, a Venezuelan man stabbed 24-year-old Klaudia, a Polish woman, to death as she was walking home from work through a park.

That horrific incident led to a silent march by thousands of protesters through Torun on Sunday, July 6. Local media reported that the march had been organised by supporters of the far-right Konfederacja political alliance and people carried signs saying “stop illegal immigration”.

Then came the rumours and misinformation. On July 14, someone in Walbrzych, southwestern Poland, called the police to report a Paraguayan man who had allegedly taken pictures of children on a playground.

The police stopped the man but did not find anything incriminating on his phone. That didn’t stop two Polish men from beating him up soon afterwards. And, the next day, a group of about 50 people stormed the hostel he and other migrants were living in. Some people threw flares into the building, and the owner has since been forced to close the hostel down.

In recent weeks, anti-migrant sentiment in Poland has been on the rise, spurred by far-right rhetoric, which asserts that Poland has been flooded with “unconstrained illegal migration”. Claims that migrants take local jobs and that they pose a threat to Poles both physically and figuratively, with their “foreign lifestyle”, are common and even encouraged by lawmakers.

One MP from Konfederacja – Konrad Berkowicz from Krakow – told TOK FM radio: “Xenophobia is an important element of our national unity. Condemning xenophobia and stifling it in the West has led to rapes and terrorist acts, that’s why we should cherish xenophobia.”

Advertisement

Elmi Abdi, 62, a Somali who came to Poland in 1996 as a refugee, told Al Jazeera: “Today, migrants are seen as responsible for all of Poland’s problems; we are scapegoats that all parties attack, even though politicians know it’s all untrue.” Today, Abdi is head of the Good Start foundation, which supports migrants, offering help with access to language classes, legal assistance and other matters.

“It is sad because we [immigrants] do everything to work safely here, pay taxes, and integrate into society.”

As misinformation – such as in the Walbrzych incident – about immigrants spreads, the Polish Migration Forum, a rights group, has called the atmosphere in Poland “pre-pogrom-like”.

“What distinguishes today’s situation is the violence. We are in a very bad place,” said Agnieszka Kosowicz, head of the forum. “Acts of violence already take place, people are subject to insults, threats and displays of hostility and contempt. This is a very alarming situation that requires a decisive response from the state.”

Rumours of ‘illegal returns’

On July 7, Poland reinstated border controls with Germany and Lithuania. That followed similar restrictions Germany imposed earlier in the year to discourage asylum seekers from entering through Poland.

Poland is also now actively monitoring the return of migrants – both asylum and non-asylum seekers – by the German police, as per European Union rules. These are people who arrived in Poland from outside the EU before crossing to Germany.

These returns of migrants by the German authorities are legal, but as rumours on the internet about “illegal returns” of migrants continue to spread, unofficial, far-right patrols have appeared at the borders to monitor the situation and make “citizen arrests” of individuals they believe to be entering the country illegally – so far without much success.

The EU accused Belarusian and Russian authorities of fomenting the EU’s migration crisis to destabilise the continent, by encouraging people from the Global South to travel to Belarus and then onwards into Europe via Poland.

In 2022, Poland built a fence along the border with Belarus to prevent migrants from entering the country irregularly. The fence, however, did little to physically stop migrants from coming in.

So, in March this year, Poland suspended the right to claim asylum altogether in a bid to deter people from coming.

Advertisement

All of this has served to stir up anti-migrant fear in Poland, which has been further amplified by far-right groups for their own political purposes.

‘We are being humiliated’

The hysteria reached a new high nearly two weeks ago, when, on Saturday, July 19, anti-migrant marches organised by the far-right Konfederacja party and football fans swept through 80 Polish towns and cities, shouting racist slurs and slogans.

Sixteen-year-old Nikola, who did not want to give her surname, told Al Jazeera that she had travelled 125km (80 miles) from her home in Gorlice, southern Poland, to attend the march in Krakow. She said she came along after watching videos on YouTube claiming that, in Western Europe, people are “afraid to leave their homes” because of the number of undocumented immigrants.

She said it was important to her to join a cause that “unites Poles today”.

“I wanted to be part of a community. People are showing those at the top that they care about security and that Poland is our country. We should do everything we can to prevent what’s happening in Western Europe,” she said.

“I’d like to feel safe in my city, and I’ve already seen a few people who looked like they are not from here,” she added.

On the march, Nikola joined a large column of several hundred people, many of them wearing Polish patriotic T-shirts and emblems of the Wisla football club, walking to Market Square. On the way, they passed tourists, some of whom were filming the protesters.

Three elderly women proudly waved white-and-red Polish flags among the football fans. “The nation has had enough of what’s happening. It’s waking up because we’re living under terror, being humiliated,” said Danuta, 60, who also did not want to give her full name. “The borders are not sealed and have to be defended by civilians,” she added, referring to the right-wing groups who patrol the Polish-German border.

On Market Square in the centre of the city, the march crossed paths with a smaller counterdemonstration organised by local left-wing groups, and the two groups exchanged insults while separated by the police.

The police did not record any major incidents during the day. But Abdi and other migrants Al Jazeera spoke with by telephone said they did not dare to leave their homes on Saturday.

Fake news fans the flames

According to experts, anti-migrant sentiment in Poland has been spurred by misinformation and fake news about the number of people entering the country, which does not reflect reality.

“Poland is not experiencing any large-scale irregular migration,” said Kosowicz. “Within the Dublin procedure [under EU rules], Germany returns people who claimed asylum in Poland and then crossed into Germany. In 2024, there were 688 such people, and this year – 318. This is nothing new.”

Advertisement

According to the International Migration Outlook report for 2024 from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 2.2 percent of Poland’s population was foreign-born in 2023. This is low compared with other European countries such as the UK (15.4 percent), Germany (18.2 percent) and France (13.8 percent).

In 2022, 152,000 immigrants obtained residence permits for more than one year in Poland, the OECD said.

At the Polish-Belarusian border, which has been used by migrants from Global South countries trying to reach Europe since 2021, incoming numbers of migrants have not been particularly high, either. According to official data, from January to late June this year, 15,022 illegal crossing attempts were recorded, of which only 5 percent were successful.

In 2024, there were nearly 30,000 attempts, out of which, by contrast, one-third (10,900) were successful. In 2021, before Poland built a fence at the border with Belarus, the number of attempts reached 52,000.

Kosowicz also blames the government, which she says has failed to build awareness about the costs and benefits of development and migration, making all foreigners potential victims of hate attacks.

“A study by Deloitte and UNHCR says that 2.7 percent of Polish GDP comes solely from the work of Ukrainian refugees. But this isn’t the information we hear from politicians,” she said.

Abdi, who is married to a Polish woman with whom he has two children, worries greatly about their future.

“When I arrived here, the Poles welcomed me wonderfully, and I care deeply about Poland; it’s my home. I want it to be safe for everyone,” he told Al Jazeera in fluent Polish.

“At the marches, people shout that they want a white Poland. I’m old enough, I’m not afraid of anything. But I am worried about my children.”