Poland sends group of Iraqis and Kurds, including children, back over Belarus border

The Polish authorities have sent a group of 20 Iraqis and Turkish Kurds, including eight children, back across the border into Belarus, despite their pleas to be allowed to remain in Poland. Thousands of people from the Middle East, Asia and Africa have in recent weeks tried to cross into Poland from Belarus.

The group was on Monday spotted by a local in Szymki, a village more than 20 km from the Polish-Belarusian border, and then taken to the border guard’s headquarters in the town of Michałowo. Once there, however, the group refused to enter the building.

“They sat on the ground and embraced, holding each other’s arms, hugging their children,” reported Gazeta Wyborcza, a leading daily. “They folded their hands as if to pray. They chanted, ‘Poland!’, with no intention of leaving.”

One member of the group told journalists and activists that they wanted to remain and become Polish citizens but were being sent back and forth by the two countries’ authorities.

“When we go to Belarus, they beat us there, take our money and send us back to Poland,” he said. “These children can’t walk, they will all die on the way, in the forest. We don’t have food or water.”

Numerous accounts from migrants have accused the Belarusian authorities of treating them violently. The Polish authorities, meanwhile, have sought to prevent people from crossing and, in some cases, have pushed them back across the border.

Despite their protests, the group were put on a bus and taken away, reports OKO.press, a news website. Journalists and activists were prevented from following the convoy.

“They have been brought to the border and are now in Belarus,” confirmed Katarzyna Zdanowicz, spokeswoman for the border guard’s Podlasie branch, quoted by TVN. “The procedure has been implemented in compliance with the regulations.”

Poland’s interior ministry last month issued a decree permitting border guards to return people who have made illegal crossings to the border. That has been criticised by human rights groups as being illegal under international law.

Marysia Złonkiewicz of the Bread and Salt organisation, which helps refugees, told OKO.press that the border guard’s actions were “inhuman”. “We know what conditions there are in the forest now – it is cold, it often rains, there are swarms of mosquitos,” she said.

“On the other side, these people get a minimum amount of food from the Belarusians,” Złonkiewicz added. “We [in Poland] are able to put them in centres, and additionally the army has been practising rapid creation of new centres.”

As the weather has worsened over September, border crossers have been facing increasingly difficult conditions. Five dead bodies have been discovered on the Polish side of the border since last week.

Poland’s government argues that it has a duty to protect its border – which is also the eastern frontier of the EU – from illegal crossings. It presented evidence this week taken from the devices of detained migrants that it says shows some have extremist sympathies and terrorist links.

“There are people there collaborating with terrorist organisations, people who had military and combat training,” Błażej Poboży, the deputy interior minister, told Radio Zet. “They are certainly not poor families, women with children, political refugees, as the media have been saying in recent weeks.”

Independent verification of the situation on the border has been made almost impossible after Poland’s president introduced a state of emergency there. As a result, non-resident civilians – including from the media and NGOs, as well as lawyers and doctors – are banned from entering the area.

Main image credit: Agnieszka Sadowska/ Agencja Gazeta

Ben Koschalka

Ben Koschalka is a translator and senior editor at Notes from Poland. Originally from Britain, he has lived in Kraków since 2005.