The case of a woman from Eritrea who was forced to give birth alone in the forested border area between Poland and Belarus has raised questions about the new Polish government’s response to the continuing humanitarian crisis at the border between the two countries.
The previous, rightwing government of the Law and Justice party (PiS) used the migration issue to score political points and was accused of encouraging rights abuses by guards along the border, with reports of frequent violent “pushbacks” of people to Belarus.
Since December, Poland has had a new government led by the former European Council president Donald Tusk, which has promised to reverse the democratic backsliding and rule-of-law abuses of its predecessor. But rights activists say that when it comes to the treatment of refugees and migrants, little has changed.
“People we meet in the forest tell us exactly the same stories as we used to hear before. Most of them who met border guards or soldiers on the Polish side of the border experienced pushbacks and violence,” said Aleksandra Chrzanowska, a rights activist who has worked at the border for several years and is part of Grupa Granica, a loose grouping of activists and rights workers who offer help to people trying to cross the border.
In the case last week, the Eritrean woman, who has not been named, was eventually allowed into Poland and taken to hospital with her newborn child. The baby was extremely cold, having been wrapped only in a sweatshirt belonging to the mother, and was placed in an incubator.
The woman claimed she had made it into Poland and then been pushed back into Belarus by Polish guards twice in the preceding weeks, despite being heavily pregnant, according to activists who have spoken with her. They added that the fact she was eventually taken in was an exception to the rule.
“Usually people who come to the fence and ask for help saying they have medical conditions, or that they haven’t eaten for days are chased away by the military, very often using violence,” said Bartek Rumieńczyk, part of Grupa Granica’s communication team.
The Belarusian regime of Alexander Lukashenko has encouraged a migration route through the country to Europe since 2021, as a way of putting pressure on the European Union, and Belarusian border guards often beat people who are pushed back from Poland, leaving them stuck in inhospitable forests in a grey zone with violence on both sides.
Tusk has criticised pushbacks on several occasions since becoming prime minister and has said it is “unacceptable” that people have died in the forest after crossing into Poland. At the same time, he has said the solution is not to end pushbacks but to strengthen the border further to ensure nobody can cross, and has repeatedly used rightwing rhetoric about the dangers of migration.
“The first and most important task of the Polish state when it comes to the situation at the border is to protect it, also against illegal migration. This is a question of the survival of our western civilisation,” Tusk said earlier this year. This month, he vowed to “protect Poland” against an EU plan to relocate migrants across the bloc from states such as Italy and Greece.
The interior ministry has denied pushing back the Eritrean woman, and in February the deputy interior minister, Maciej Duszczyk, said it was not fair to call the new government’s policies a continuation of what happened at the border during the PiS years. “Our task is to combine the security of our state with humanitarianism,” he said.
But activists say pushbacks remain the norm in cases where there is no oversight. Chrzanowska said that in recent months, if activists reached people stranded in the forest first and then helped them to apply for asylum, their claims were generally lodged and considered. “But those who entered Poland and met border guards without any witnesses tell us that they had no possibility to apply for asylum,” she said. These people often claim to have been subjected to physical violence by border guards and then pushed back to Belarus.
Last week, Chrzanowska met an Ethiopian man who claimed he had been detained a few days earlier by police in Poland and “severely beaten in the ribs, shoulder and across the face” before being taken to the office of the border guards. There he was threatened until he signed a declaration saying he did not want to apply for asylum in Poland. “Then they pushed him back to Belarus. After that, he was brutally beaten by Belarusians,” she said.
Some in Tusk’s ruling coalition have become uneasy at the lack of action on the situation at the border. Franek Sterczewski, an MP who was involved in helping people in the border area during the peak of the standoff in 2021, said that instead of using pushbacks, authorities should implement a quick and transparent process of reviewing asylum claims.
“Pushbacks are a sign that we don’t have control, and we won’t regain control until we stop pushbacks,” he said.