Five migrants, including Iraqi nationals, have been found dead on the Polish-Belarusian border – four of these on the Polish side of the border and one woman on the Belarusian side. All of them died due to hypothermia and exhaustion. Human rights activists argue that the deaths occurred due to the illegal pushbacks applied by both Polish and Belarusian border officers who denied the migrants access to protection centers and refused to accept their asylum applications. They also warn that the number of victims could become higher.
Iraqi family’s story
According to state media in Belarus, the dead woman had fled from Iraq together with her husband and three children. Her husband told the Belarusian state television, STV, that he and his wife and children had managed to reach a Polish village where they were trying to keep warm and dry their clothes by lighting a fire. They had asked one of the villagers for water but instead, he alerted Polish border officers.
Honderden migranten zwerven op dit moment in de bossen van het grensgebied tussen Wit-Rusland en Polen. Uit angst voor 'pushbacks' houden ze zich schuil. Correspondent @Saskiadekkers ging kijken. #Nieuwsuur pic.twitter.com/0pfwCGLdfk
— Nieuwsuur (@Nieuwsuur) September 20, 2021
The man said he and his family had not been allowed to put their shoes and clothes on before being forced to the Belarusian side of the border.
“My wife did not feel well and she had problems with blood pressure. She was very tired and she was walking very slowly. One of the officers wore metal gloves and pushed her strongly, and she fell. When I looked at her, she was shocked and she could not move,” he said.
Meanwhile, Belarusian and Polish border officials have merely traded accusations as to who was to blame for the situation. However, Katarzyna Zdanowicz, a spokesperson for the Polish Border Patrol in Podlaskie Voivodship, admitted in an interview with the German media that border officers did apply pushbacks towards those migrants asking for international protection.
State of emergency or smokescreen
The Polish government introduced a state of emergency on 2 September 2021 in some areas of Eastern Poland near the Belarusian border, banning media and NGO representatives from the zone making it impossible to monitor the situation or provide aid to people in need.
Katarzyna Czarnota, a social scientist, migration expert, and an activist with the monitoring group, Grupa Granica, told DevelopmentAid:
“We are sure that pushbacks caused those deaths, as this practice exhausts people. Migrants are pushed back and forth from Poland to Belarus and from Belarus to Poland even dozens of times. They stay in the Białowieska Backwoods, where it is cold and wet, and where they have no food or shelter. We find at least one such group every day. They send us their location. They are completely wet, hungry, sick, and very often have hypothermia.”
Katarzyna Czarnota added that they pass migrants to border officers who should place them in special centers until their asylum applications are processed. However, according to her, the border officers often state that they will simply abide by procedures whereas in fact, they take migrants back to the border, leaving them there without any help. Subsequently, when the activists look for the migrants they passed to border officers they cannot find them anywhere which is a clear indication of pushbacks.
“Currently we are looking for one Iraqi family we passed to border officers, but we do not know where they are,” she said.
Another group of migrants from Nigeria found by the BBC reported that both Polish and Belarusian border officers had pushed them back and forth and that they had been bitten by officers.
Death toll higher than reported
Czarnota also stated that according to Grupa Granica there are many more deaths than has been officially reported.
“They probably happen every day, but we do not know about them due to the state of emergency and lack of access to the border area. In fact, we are dealing with a humanitarian crisis here,” she noted.
An inhabitant of the border area told the activist:
“Going through the forest I accidentally met a group of refugees. They were totally wet so I gave them everything I had. I saw one child, a woman, and two men. The woman was crying all the time. It has been raining here for two days. I went back there with food, but they had disappeared.”
Polish authorities under fire
Contacted by DevelopmentAid, Marta Górczyńska, a human rights lawyer, noted that the Polish authorities were violating both international and domestic law.
“The Polish government has not only violated the Geneva Convention but also article 56 of the Polish Constitution. Both documents give migrants an opportunity to apply for asylum, but Polish border patrol officers don’t even take their applications.”
Moreover, Marta Górczyńska expressed concern at instances of torture against migrants.
“Torture is totally forbidden even in war conditions. But what is happening on the Polish border should be recognized as torture, as Polish border officers leave totally exhausted, hungry, and sick people in the woods, without shelter and life-saving assistance, pushing them into this situation,” she emphasized.
To justify the pushbacks, the Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs, Maciej Wąsik, issued a ministerial decree on the 22nd of August 2021 that legalizes them although many lawyers and human rights experts have described this move as illegal as it is in contravention of international law and the Polish Constitution.
International community’s reaction
The UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, and the International Organization for Migration have expressed concern at the deaths of migrants and requested access to the zone to deliver humanitarian aid.
“UNHCR and IOM call for immediate access to those affected in order to provide lifesaving medical help, food, water, and shelter, especially in light of the approaching winter,” a joint statement read. They stressed that “political disagreement on responsibilities must never result in the loss of life.”
Adalbert Jahnz, the European Commission’s spokesperson, said that “the border management cannot take place without respecting basic rights and cost human life.” Meanwhile, the EU Commissioner for home affairs, Ylva Johansson, announced she would shortly visit the zone as a result of the deaths of migrants.
The number of migrants trying to cross the Belarusian-Polish border has been on the rise since August. Polish border officers assess that about 3,800 people have tried to cross since the beginning of September while Grupa Granica estimates that since 2 September, when the state of emergency was introduced, at least 4,000 pushbacks have taken place.
Fig.1. Number of pusbacks according to Grupa Granica
