While the European Union and its member states are focused on war talk, states of emergency, and barbed wire fences, the acute suffering of the women, men, and children trapped in limbo at the border is being ignored. In the meanwhile, a humanitarian crisis is taking root on the border, with at least eight documented deaths and hundreds, if not thousands of people either trapped in inhuman conditions in Belarus or its border zone, or stranded in the woods in Poland and having to walk through swamps, marshlands and difficult forest terrain. I spent two weeks on the ground in October, one in Belarus the other in Poland, documenting accounts from migrants of abuses on both sides of the border. They told me how Belarusian border guards pushed them – exhausted and abused – to try again to enter Poland, in most cases unsuccessfully, resulting only in their forced return to Belarus and further abuse.
Migrants described the Belarussian border as a place of brute violence, where they were forcibly kept in open spaces without shelter, food, or water for days to weeks, vulnerable to theft and other abuse, and blocked from returning to Minsk or their home countries. Rescue mission in Polish forest to bring aid to five Iraqi migrants who had not had food or water for several days, October, 2021.
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