In forests on the Poland-Belarus border, migrants are fighting for survival

Migrants crossing into Poland from Belarus say Polish border guards are pushing them back over the frontier, leaving them hiding in forests along the border, as winter approaches. Olivia Chan reports.

This is 26-year-old Yemeni migrant Mohammed’s plea to Polish border guards after they pushed him back to Belarus and left him in the forest.

The former travel agent is one of the thousands of migrants from countries in the Middle East, Africa and Afghanistan who are trying to enter the European Union country via Belarus.

“What should we do? What’s our mistake? Our mistake, that we were born in this life? Our mistake, that we believe in Europe? Our mistake, that we believe in the United Nations? That was our mistake?”

On Thursday (October 14), Poland’s foreign ministry summoned the Belarusian charge d’affaires after Polish police found the sixth migrant body near the border with Belarus.

The European Union’s executive Commission blames Belarus for deliberately orchestrating the flow of migrants to put pressure on the bloc in retaliation for sanctions it had slapped on Minsk over human rights abuses.

Belarus has denied this

Human rights advocates have accused the Polish government of treating migrants inhumanely and not letting them apply for international protection.

Piotr Bystrianin is a senior official with the Ocalenie Foundation, a charity planning to deliver humanitarian aid for migrants at the border.

He said Polish authorities are operating a strategy that aims to see migrants quote “eventually give up and go back to the country they fled from.”

The Polish government says the migrants are Belarus’s responsibility as they are legally on its territory, and that offers of humanitarian aid have been refused.

Poland also began building a barbed wire fence in August and lawmakers are due to vote on the construction of a wall equipped with motion sensors and cameras at a cost of over $407 million.

Migrants have resorted to desperate measures to enter Poland

Syrian Zainab Ahmad told Polish border guards she needed medical attention and was taken to a hospital, and from there a migrant center in Poland.

The Border Guard have prevented over 9,000 attempts to cross the frontier from Belarus into Poland from the start of January till the end of September, according to Poland’s parliament website – and of those around 8,000 took place in the last two months alone.

In Brussels, the EU executive summoned envoys from Poland, Lithuania and Latvia on Thursday over the fate of migrants stuck on their borders with Belarus.