Middle East migrants under siege in Poland's forest sanctuaries

Legal battle to stop asylum seekers being beaten and deported at border with Belarus

Poland is stepping up security at its border with Belarus to stem the arrival of Middle East and African migrants. Getty Images

A call for help emanates from a migrant deep in a Polish forest to fire the starting gun on a race between aid workers on the one side and the threat of capture by border guards holding deportation notices on the other.

When the "alarm phone" rings, helpers are sent with not only food and clothes in their backpacks but also powers of attorney ready to be signed. People arriving from Belarus, most of whom have travelled from the Middle East and Africa, are offered help to claim asylum before they can be apprehended by the authorities.

The volunteers must avoid being seen by border guards or soldiers, said Ola Chrzanowska, a case worker in the forest with Poland's Association for Legal Intervention. "If they see us, they might make it impossible for us to reach these people first – and if they find them first, they will for sure push them back," she said.

Frontline activists who spoke to The National are relying on the law to curb what they say is an intensifying anti-migrant crackdown in Poland. They are turning to the courts to challenge rejected asylum claims and pursue allegations of violence by guards, said to involve beatings, rubber bullets and pepper spray.

Poland has launched its own legal offensive over what it says is a crisis orchestrated by Russian ally Belarus. Aid workers have been hit with smuggling charges. Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who took power a year ago, has called for suspending the right to asylum – a move which in turn will be challenged in court – but is now supported in exceptional circumstances by the EU.

The legal back and forth in Poland is one example of how Europe's bitter migration debate is increasingly playing out in the courts. In Italy, France and Greece, activists outvoted in elections and parliaments have turned to judges as a last throw of the dice to block policies they say breach human rights, while in Poland, Germany and the Netherlands, governments are testing the limits of European legal norms to quell voter anger over migration.

"We were hoping that with the change of [Poland's] government, at least they will try to respect the law a bit more, because they brand themselves as this return of the rule of law," said Dominika Ozynska of humanitarian group Egala, which works in the border forest near Belarus.

"I don't think we expected it to get so much worse," she said. "It was quite clear that people would not be treated better but we thought that they would do so with a bit of better PR, they would try to keep up appearances, and that they would at least stop targeting humanitarians and want to co-operate with them. But we were wrong."

Tricked out of asylum

Migrants are enticed to travel to Belarus as a "gateway to other countries", including by advertising on TV and social media offering free travel packages and visas, according to a filing by a European human rights commissioner in a case involving 32 Afghans. Belarus allegedly pushes them to cross the border.

Those who "escape the manhunt", as Ms Chrzanowska described it, and are intercepted by friendly volunteers in the forest, are far from secure in Poland. Some are tricked or threatened into signing away their asylum rights, activists say. Others, typically from Egypt, Iraq or Morocco, have claims summarily dismissed.

A new arrival might "receive the bunch of documents that they are forced to sign and one of them is the statement that they don't want to apply for international protection in Poland, even though verbally they said that they want to," said Magdalena Fuchs, a lawyer for the Association for Legal Intervention.

"Even if it's written in their own language, they don't really understand because they receive a bunch of documents and it's quite overwhelming. One of the violations that we see is that a representative is not always allowed to be there."

Some never get that far. This year more than 2,500 people have been pushed straight back to Belarus, according to figures from Polish group We Are Monitoring. It says Syrians are the largest group of those requesting help, followed by Somalians, Ethiopians, Eritreans, Yemenis and Afghans.

Mr Tusk says Poland is fighting "acts of hybrid warfare" on its border and that the right to asylum has been "twisted and used against us" by a hostile Belarus and Russia. In recent months there has been a resurgence of a crisis that began in 2021, with more than 15,000 crossings this year compared to 5,600 last year.

The EU this month gave the go-ahead to Poland and other countries on Europe’s eastern flank to temporarily suspend asylum rights when they believe that Belarus and Russia are “weaponising” migrants to destabilise the bloc. It said “in view of the serious nature of the threat, as well as its persistence”, EU member countries can temporarily suspend a migrant’s request for international protection in exceptional circumstances. Henna Virkkunen, European Commission Executive Vice President, said a freeze on asylum rights should only be used “when the weaponisation is posing security threats for member states and exceptional measures are needed”.

Mr Tusk's proposal to suspend asylum altogether has not yet been enacted but was condemned as a breach of treaties that Poland has signed. Although in practice asylum rights are not respected at present, legitimising the change via the law would set a dangerous precedent, Ms Chrzanowska said.

"If the state is able to limit one of the basic human rights, which is the right to apply for asylum, then within a couple of weeks, months or years, why wouldn't they limit some other human rights if it suited them for this or that political reason?" she said.

Lawyers will be "fighting against this law" and arguing it does not accord with the Polish constitution or international law, said Ms Fuchs. "We will be challenging it," she said. "But in practice it might result in more violations."

Taken to court

Activists also report a resurgence in criminal cases being pursued against aid workers, some of whom have been hit with smuggling charges, especially since a Polish soldier was killed by a migrant at the border in June.

Five people will stand trial in Hajnowka, Poland on smuggling charges in January, in a case activists had hoped would be dropped under Mr Tusk. If the court finds against them, then "every single person that ever provided humanitarian help at the border could be accused of the same charges", said Ms Ozynska.

"If the government will start targeting more and more people, and putting them through lengthy trials or questioning, this is one of the methods to drain resources from organisations, to flood us with legal fees," she said. "The teams are quite small and everyone is struggling financially."

In the opposite direction, Polish President Andrzej Duda is being sued for comparing migrants to pigs, while lawyers have tried to work up cases against border guards accused of violence. Reports of abused include an Iranian woman being hit in the eye with a Polish officer's gun in May and asylum seekers being bound with cable ties and driven back to Belarus.

Most reports of violence during the initial crisis in 2021 were from the Belarusian side but the situation has now reversed, Ms Chrzanowska said, and almost all those who make repeated attempts to enter cross the border say they were subject to physical violence.

"They are beaten, they are kicked, they are threatened with guns, sometimes they say that they shoot them with rubber bullets," she said. "We hear about spraying pepper gas in their eyes and on their bodies, because sometimes they are also forced to get naked and are pushed back naked."

But from a lawyer's perspective, any attempt to prove the allegations can disappear in the dark and freezing forest.

"Usually the people who experience violence on the border don't have any material evidence to back up their stories, because for example their phones were destroyed so they couldn't even record it," said Ms Fuchs. "So certainly from the perspective of the criminal proceedings it's quite difficult to win this kind of cases."