Claims have emerged that “pretend asylum seekers” are being shipped into Polish cities, as a part of a wider anti-migrant disinformation marketing campaign.
Posts like these on X have been circulating broadly, exhibiting movies of a bunch of individuals dragging suitcases alongside a avenue in Kraków at night time.
The captions revealed with the video learn: “Faux asylum seekers are dumped in Kraków, Poland, at night time, when Poles are sleeping.”
They accuse some unnamed authorities of being “sneaky” and desirous to destroy Poland, in addition to the remainder of Europe.
We put a nonetheless from the video by means of a reverse picture search, which led us to a Fb put up revealed on 19 April 2025 by a public lobbying motion for the residents of Previous Kraków.
It campaigns to cut back noise and the opening instances of catering companies within the metropolis, amongst different points, to maintain it peaceable for the individuals who reside there, in line with its web site.
The Fb put up says the video exhibits a so-called “resort crawl” of about 100 individuals within the metropolis at about 1:15 am.
It means that the vacationers have been making an excessive amount of noise for that point of morning and that Kraków authorities ought to take into account putting in soundproof home windows for residents, like the same initiative in Vienna.
The pinnacle of the lobbying group instructed EuroVerify in a message that one among its members shot the video for instance of “disruption” within the metropolis.
He stated they do not know the nationality, gender or faith of the individuals within the video, and that, whereas they weren’t notably loud, their suitcases rolling alongside the road have been.
“This can be a disturbance of night time time quiet,” he added.
Proper-wing politicians on the centre
The miscaptioned video is especially regarding as a result of even Polish politicians seem to have shared it with the identical false claims to advance their agenda.
EuroVerify contacted the workplace of Aleksander Miszalski, the mayor of Kraków, which stated it was conscious of the video and shared a letter Miszalski had written to Polish MP Anna Krupka.
The letter asks Krupka, of the right-wing populist celebration Regulation and Justice, to apologise for a social media put up on 22 April during which she shared the video and accused Kraków of bringing migrants into town “beneath the quilt of night time”. The put up shortly gained traction amongst far-right teams.
“I formally request that you just challenge a public apology for spreading disinformation and developing a deceptive narrative regarding migration coverage,” the mayor stated in his letter, noting that merely eradicating the put up is “solely insufficient”.
“The video featured within the put up, which exhibits overseas vacationers en path to their motels alongside Łobzowska Road, has been wilfully taken out of context and manipulated to incite worry among the many residents of Kraków,” he continued.
“Such a deplorable act is wholly incompatible with the tasks and moral requirements anticipated of a Member of the Parliament of the Republic of Poland,” Miszalski added. “By exploiting the general public belief vested in you, you might be intentionally fuelling division, inciting hostility, and interesting within the unfold of crude propaganda designed solely to safe transient political benefit.”
It seems that Krupka has eliminated the video from her social media channels, though screenshots of it nonetheless exist, however EuroVerify couldn’t discover any express public apology.
Miszalski has since referred the matter to the Parliamentary Ethics Committee on account of Krupka’s failure to apologise.
“1000’s of individuals noticed this manipulation that attacked the picture of Kraków,” the mayor stated in a put up on X. “I known as on Anna Krupka to publicly apologise. Nevertheless, she doesn’t imagine that she did something incorrect…”
Since posting the video, Krupka has appeared on Polish tv and stated that she did not publish it herself; slightly, it was “the one that runs [her] Fb account”, in line with nationwide information studies.
Krupka stated she instructed the social media supervisor to delete the put up as soon as she realised what had occurred.
Different studies state that Krupka stated she thought of the matter closed after she eliminated the video. She didn’t reply to EuroVerify’s request for remark.
All in all, there is no proof that Kraków is bringing in “pretend asylum seekers”, and the video is being shared on-line with a false caption that’s presumably designed to whip up hatred and worry of migrants.
