The cracking of the branches resounds in the dark night. You have to crawl under the trunks, sink into the brambles that scratch the skin. Open your eyes, above all, and listen to the slightest sign of distress. The forest, dense and dark, is revealed in the light of the headlamps of the small group of activists. “If you can hear us, come forward! A lonely woman from an African country, “very badly, vomiting”, cannot be found there, somewhere in the middle of the conifers, not far from the Polish town of Hajnówka, about fifteen kilometers from the border. Belarusian. A scene that is repeated in rural and rural Podlachie, this region of eastern Poland, on the borders of the European Union, which has become the scene of a humanitarian drama.
The emergency message, coupled with an approximate geographical position, was received several minutes ago by the volunteer Humanitarian Emergency group from Podlasie, ordinary citizens engaged in helping exiles. The woman attempted to cross this vast expanse of trees, on the edge of Poland and Belarus, the “migratory route” orchestrated since the summer of 2021 by Alexander Lukashenko and taken by tens of thousands of candidates for exile, many from the Middle East and Africa, some at the risk of their lives. The Belarusian despot, accused of supplying a chain of smugglers, is probably seeking revenge for Western sanctions against him, dangling migrants easy access to Europe. A lure that transforms from these majestic border forests into a cemetery.
No man’s land border
The search started almost an hour ago. Karol Cichocki, sweating, rushes in, sweeping his light beam. “The woman would have been in the woods for five days,” says the blonde-haired volunteer, in his thirties. A squadron of police and border guards patrol the woods on a night in late June. He knows that his presence, although requested, carries a risk, while “the fear of refoulement does not disappear”. But it is, for now, a race against time, perhaps a matter of life or death.
It is in this same wooded area, not far from there, that the inert body of a young woman from a West African country was discovered last February. Her name was Mahlet. On Polish territory, the young woman being unable to continue to advance, two of her companions in misfortune had come out of the woods to seek help from border guards. Which instead sent the two men back to the no man’s land between Poland and Belarus, ignoring calls to rescue their comrade. A few days later, Malhet was found dead.
” Trapped “
It is past midnight when suddenly, in the darkness, a figure appears lying on its stomach, a black bag by its side. ” She’s there ! Face down, in a state of semi-consciousness. His breathing, weak and jerky, is interspersed with vomiting. The swarthy young woman is gradually pulled out of the woods, the sleeping bag on which she was resting serving as a stretcher. The paramedics take over. Head to Hajnówka Hospital, not far from there.
The next day, in the infectious diseases department, the vagueness dissipates: it is a 27-year-old Ethiopian. Ethiopia is currently suffering the aftermath of a civil war. Sehada (the first name has been changed to preserve the woman’s anonymity) “is doing better, being able to speak now”, according to a source from the hospital establishment. The exile has indeed “crossed the border illegally”, will confirm to the Duty an official of the border guards of Podlasie, specifying that she “was unable to call for help”, being without a telephone and having been abandoned by the group which accompanied her. Since the end of June, she has been confined in one of these closed centers for foreigners in Poland, where the living conditions have been repeatedly deplored by human rights organizations.
The fact remains that Sehada, who was able to apply for international protection on Polish soil, is one of the handful of “fortunate” people on this border. The posture of the Polish national-conservative executive, intractable in the face of this “hybrid war” led by the Belarusian dictatorship, remains that of almost systematically turning back migrants, despite the conventions on the right of asylum. Despite the fact, too, that Lukashenko’s henchmen, quick to use violence, often prevent any backtracking. “We sometimes receive messages from people stuck in the ‘death zone’ between the two countries: with nothing to eat, no way to charge their phone, some are being beaten very harshly by the Belarusian authorities,” says Katarzyna. Mazurkiewicz-Bylok, member of the volunteer Humanitarian Emergency from Podlasie and residing in a border village.
Humanitarian crisis
In addition to the constant ballet of military convoys, the Polish government of the Law and Justice party has locked its eastern flank. An imposing wall stretches over 180 kilometers along the Polish-Belarusian border, equipped with thermal cameras. At the end of an unspecified forest road, three soldiers strapped with rifles keep watch at the foot of the steel mastodon at the end of the afternoon. A device which, according to Anna Michalska, spokesperson for Straż Graniczna (Polish Border Guard), has “dropped the number of attempted illegal crossings from 40,000 in 2021 to 15,000 last year”. “Most of these foreigners are neither war refugees nor political refugees, they are simply economic migrants,” she says annoyed in her office at the Warsaw headquarters.
Admittedly, the flows have dried up since the peak in November 2021, and the state of emergency has been lifted. But another crisis, a humanitarian one, has never ceased. Organizations providing an emergency number are sometimes contacted more than ten times a day by chilled, injured and starving migrants. A new migratory route is being established, “perceived by migrants as a safer way to enter Europe than the Mediterranean Sea”, believes the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants. And it is Moscow, and no longer Minsk, that is their entry point, pointing to Kremlin complicity.
For lack of medical assistance, some succumbed, some to hypothermia, some to drowning or dehydration. “In other cases, they die hiding from the border guards,” regrets Marta Górczyńska, lawyer for the Polish Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights. According to her, these tragedies are partly due to the “Polish policy of refoulement”.
Nearly fifty deaths, on both sides of the border, have been deplored since August 2021, according to Grupa Granica, a humanitarian collective which has assisted more than 14,000 people. The macabre toll could still increase, with the missing numbering in the hundreds. The Muslim cemetery of Bohoniki, a border Tatar village in the middle of the fields, is the silent witness to this tragedy. Among the seven graves lined up at the foot of a mound, that of Halikari Dhaker, a 27-week-old Iraqi baby, buried on November 23, 2021.
A new migratory route
It is in the vast primary forest of Białowieża, straddling Poland and Belarus, that most clandestine crossings are concentrated to this day. And what about the wall? Faced with the barbed wire that crowns its five meters high, some opt for unbarricaded swamps or rivers. “Others use ladders or trunks to jump over, at the risk of breaking their legs,” says Łukasz Synowiecki. From his shack in Masiewo, a village located less than a kilometer from the border, this 45-year-old man has multiplied rescue actions, alone, over the past two years. “Some, in very poor condition, refuse to call for help for fear of being turned back for the umpteenth time”, says the man with the Catholic faith, who raises the total lack of preparation of many people, “deluded by the smugglers”.
At the edge of the forest, in a secret locality, the base of Grupa Granica echoes these crying needs. Aleksandra Chrzanowska, a member of the collective, reveals the inside of the hangar where, here and there, survival blankets, rubber boots, external batteries are piled up. The clothes intended for the exiles are, preferably, of dark color; it’s better to hide from the border guards, when hiding in the undergrowth. As for the soups piling up in a refrigerator in the adjacent room, “you have to avoid spices, because by dint of drinking water from the swamps, some people develop stomach problems”.
Refusal of indifference
“Nightmare” is the term used by some border residents, overwhelmed by the feeling of being left alone in the face of a crisis that is beyond them. A heaviness exacerbated by online hatred and the sometimes hostile behavior of Polish border guards. And this, while the ruling party, quick to vilify humanitarian NGOs, seems to be making the migration issue an electoral fuel, in view of the legislative elections in the fall.
“We are portrayed as outlaws, traitors. Some no longer have the strength to help and have moved,” says Katarzyna Mazurkiewicz-Bylok. Long brown hair, dark circles under her eyes, a soft voice, this 40-year-old mother is a quiet force. By refusing to be indifferent, she has taken part in recent months in “citizen patrols”, as they are called here. An operation as trying as it is delicate. “I never would have believed that one day, I would participate in the search for bodies in the woods”, confides the one who knows the importance of a burial for the families of the victims. “We are not trained in this, but since the authorities do not…”
Back in the woods of Białowieża, a few days later, with Karol Cichocki. A new candidate for exile requires water, warm clothes, food. Along the way, it only takes a few strides to notice the recent passage of the damned of the forest, in the light of these sodden clothes strewn on the ground, scattered. As a child, Karol, who grew up in Białystok, in the east of the country, came to walk in this same forest, seemingly peaceful. “Impossible to see her as before, now. However, yesterday as today, the forests of Podlasie conceal silent torments. During the Nazi occupation, 80 years ago, many Jews, hunted down, took refuge under its canopy. Most of them had perished from cold and hunger, or even under the bullets of the invader, in the anonymity of the woods.
This report was financed thanks to the support of the Transat International Journalism Fund.The duty.