foreign students locked up in Poland after fleeing Ukraine

They were studying information technology, management, in Kharkiv, Lutsk or even Bila Tserkva… and now find themselves locked up in a detention center for foreigners about forty kilometers from Warsaw, after having fled the war in Ukraine. This is revealed by the Radio France survey, Wednesday March 23, conducted in partnership with several international media and with the support of the NGO Lighthouse Reports.

>> At the Polish border, “the Ukrainian guards hit us with sticks”, say foreign students

“I did not expect to find myself in this situation fleeing to Poland, as if I were a criminal”, testifies Samuel (the first name has been changed) on the phone, a student from Kharkiv, in the north-east of Ukraine. After traveling to kyiv, then Lviv (near the Polish border), the young Nigerian explains that he crossed the border on February 27 with his student card, his passport having remained at the university for administrative reasons. “But when I arrived in Poland, the border guards told me that they couldn’t let me go, because I don’t have a passport, and for this reason I had to be detained,” remembers the one who has family in Germany, locked up for more than three weeks.

On February 25, Michał Dworczyk, head of the Polish Prime Minister’s cabinet, nevertheless assured that “Anyone fleeing the war would be welcomed in Poland, especially people without a passport”. “It’s hard not to see racism there”, observes Małgorzata Rycharska, from the NGO Hope & Humanity Poland, who adds “not to understand why these people were locked up”. Contacted, the Cameroonian embassy in Berlin, which has so far identified three of its nationals in these closed centers, also expressed its surprise. And ensures that the Cameroonian students had valid identity documents with them.

In the center of Lesznowola, about twenty non-Ukrainians arriving from Ukraine are currently detained, among whom we have identified for the moment four students of African origin. In all, there would be 52 foreign people fleeing Ukraine sent to these closed centers from February 24 to March 15, according to a letter from border guards addressed to MP Tomasz Anisko.

Contacted, the border guards indicate that they cannot give more information, for reasons of identity protection. For its part, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) explains “be aware of three centers in Poland where third-country nationals arriving from Ukraine, without adequate travel documents, are taken for identity checks” but specifies not to include that of Lesznowola.

“We are students from Ukraine, we don’t deserve to be here”, denounces Samuel, who adds that he does not understand why he finds himself in a center where migrants who tried to cross the border with Belarus illegally last year are locked up. Gabriel (the first name has been changed), another Nigerian student who was studying at the National Institute of Trade and Economics in Kharkiv, tells him that when he arrived in Poland, “the border guards took our phones by force”. In a telephone interview with a representative of the Nigerian diaspora – obtained by Radio France – Gabriel said he was forced to seek international protection in Poland, “otherwise they told me that I was going to prison”. Pending the decision, he was sent to this closed camp where he has been staying since the end of February, describing “a very bad situation”.

If theoretically, the Polish law allows the placement in closed centers in the event of request for asylum in very precise situations (in the event of risk, for example, that the person escapes during the procedure), the practice differs. Warsaw had already been singled out by the UN for the systematic detention of migrants and refugees during the crisis on the Belarusian border last year. “A lot of people here have gone mad, I’m terrified, there are some who have been here for nine months”, frightened Gabriel. No access to lawyers, telephones with cameras removed, internet access for only twenty minutes a day… Poland. “We were just students, he repeats. They should deport me and let me go back to Nigeria, but even that can take six months sometimes.” he worries.

Survey: Maud Jullien, Halima Salat Barre, Jack Sapoch, Daniel Howden, May Bulman, Nadine White, Steffen Lüdke, Hélène Bienvenu, Sarah Bakaloglou.