Back in September 2021, a 16-year-old boy from Iraq managed to cross the Polish border with his family. They were exhausted and hungry from the journey, but this boy was vomiting blood. The Salvation Foundation (Fundacja Ocalenie), an NGO trying to help refugees in the region, was not able to reach the family before they were pushed back to Belarus by Straż Graniczna, Poland’s border force. That 16-year-old died the same night.

The same pattern is found repeated across the thousands of people attempting to cross the border. The family, leaving the body of the boy in Belarus, were pushed back again – and once more the NGO was not able to meet with the family before they were sent back to ‘where they came from’.

“As far as we know, at least seven people have already died from being exhausted”, says Jacek Bialas, an international law expert associated with the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, who closely follows the crisis engulfing the eastern border of the European Union.

To understand the process which led to hundreds of people wandering in what is called ‘the green border’, a strip of land dividing Belarus from three EU-member states: Poland, Latvia and Lithuania, one has to go back to 2015 when the war in Syria resulted with millions of refugees seeking safety in Europe.

The current plight of refugees in Eastern Europe comes from two processes: the weaponization of refugees and asylum seekers by authoritarian regimes bordering the EU, and the right-wing populism successes in some former communist states – which are now members of the European Union.

Europe’s history of push-backs

The 2015 refugee crisis resulted in another process that is now being implemented by the authorities of Poland. When millions had arrived in Greece and Italy, both of which were unequipped to handle such a massive inflow of refugees, these countries began practising what Julia Hahn, Deutsche Welle’s correspondent in Turkey described as a “disturbing violation of human rights and refugee law”: pushbacks, which is known as the practice of forcing refugees away from the border. This became a common strategy against the inflow in both countries.

This became a practice that all European states facing migration are playing with, despite it being hugely contested by human rights organisations and experts alike. Even countries like the United Kingdom appear to be mesmerised by this illegal, yet convenient method to reject refugees: in September of 2021, the UK’s home secretary Priti Patel had ordered British officials to adjust the maritime law in a way that would allow the Border Guard authority to turn around small boats crossing the English Channel from France. The idea resulted in severe backlash and was eventually unsuccessful, but the mere fact that legalising pushbacks was even explored is yet another testimony to the fact that this practice has become a common political tool.

Poland, however, is the first country to use pushbacks as one of its major elements in response to facing large numbers of immigrants trying to cross the border. Pushed by the Lukashenko’s regime, people of Iraqi, Afghani, Syrian and Yemeni origin are trying to apply for asylum in Poland, but the Border Guard (Straż Graniczna) is ignoring these requests and physically forcing them back into Belarus, resulting in thousands being stuck on a narrow strip of land.

According to human rights standards, all people applying for asylum should be provided with food, clothes, and medical assistance if necessary. Furthermore, asylum applications, including the verbal ones, should be recognised and result in applicants being transferred to safety. Instead of following the law, Poland’s government is trying to defend its stance by portraying pushbacks as a necessary measure.

Mr Bialas understands it differently: “I think the government of Poland tried to use this situation to improve their performance on the political scene, to show that they are conducting an effective ‘fight against the danger’ created by migrants. I think more than 50% of Polish citizens support this policy, support the pushbacks. Most probably because they are somehow scared by the government propaganda that those people who tried to cross the border will be somehow dangerous to Polish society – people of Arabic origin were portrayed by the government as terrorists, just for the political reasons”.

His argument hints at yet another element: the lack of a consistent strategy towards immigrants and asylum seekers by the European Union, which enables different member-states to design their strategies in a way that reflects the particular interests of a given society or government. “I would say that there should be one, common European policy toward asylum seekers, which would entail, for example, introducing legal pathways for asylum seekers. This would help to reduce the appeal to resorting to life-threatening or criminal methods to cross the border”, Mr Bialas argues.

An EU-wide strategy towards refugees and asylum seekers would also render it impossible for governments to go around the definitions in order to deny people their rights; a tactic which is heavily exploited by the Polish government. “There is a body of laws providing all the definitions – who is a refugee, who is a subsidiary protection holder – regulating asylum procedures and reception conditions etc. At the end of the day, however, everything depends on how testimonies will be assessed by the asylum authorities. And, there are some serious differences – the recognisability rate could be different in particular member states”.

One example he gave is playing around with the credibility of testimonies. “By means of deciding that some applications are not credible, governments introduce subjectivity into the application assessment. A credibility assessment gives border guards the option to state that the person is lying in their testimony due to some discrepancies in it.”

Poland and Hungary defy the EU

Contrary to the argument presented by the Polish authorities, pushbacks are not the only solution. During the 2015 refugee crisis, much had been done to control the migration flows and assist member states in helping those who had already made it to the EU. The problem is that back then Poland was not a part of this solution, and so it became very difficult politically for the current Law and Justice government to seek help from the EU – and, in fact, Poland has so far turned down all offers of support from Frontex and the EU as a whole.

The cover-up

All the above mentioned elements have contributed to the plight of thousands of people trapped on the Polish-Belarusian border. Lukashenko wants to achieve a deal similar to the one Erdogan got. The EU, however, has no consequent policy to employ, and Poland’s authorities are now stuck in the consequences of how they attempted to politically exploit the problems other EU member-states faced – most likely Mr Kaczyński and others had never imagined they might find themselves in the shoes of Greece or Italy in 2015.

Since I spoke to Jacek Bialas, the situation has deteriorated even further: instead of small groups being pushed back and forth by both the Belarusian and Polish border guards, the border is now heavily militarised, with thousands of migrants being pushed by Belarus to attempt to break through the barbed wire wall, put there by Poles – who respond with tear gas.

Results of the prolonged crisis are deadly. “As far as we know, at least seven people already died being exhausted”, Mr Bialas told me, but since then the number of those killed has increased several times – according to OKO.press, the most recent victim is a 14-year-old Kurdish boy who froze to death in a makeshift camp near Kuznica.

Before this, the dead body of a 24-year-old Syrian man who had been in Belarus since mid-September was found in Bialystok, Poland. Another victim was a 39-year-old Iraqi woman whose family, including three children, were found near her body. According to the Belarusian authorities, the husband of this woman reported they had been pushed back to Belarus by the Polish border guards.

In most cases, death is a result of exhaustion and hypothermia – people are stuck in swamps and forests, with temperatures reaching minus five degrees celsius at night. According to immigrants and human activists groups present in the region, dead bodies are a frequent sighting in the area. However, any independent verification of these claims or numbers are impossible as Poland has sealed the area off by imposing a state of emergency.

“We assume that the guards may easily just return people back to Belarus, without any monitoring or media attention”, Mr Bialas said when I asked about the decision not to allow the media or NGO’s into the border region. “In our opinion, there is no basis for that [state of emergency] because the situation could be dealt with without the state of emergency. Journalists are even able to go into war zones to provide records of the situation. We do not see why this is a state of emergency, why was it introduced”.

Undoubtedly, the state of emergency is politically useful as it enables the government to block access to the border to all those who would be able to expose the illegality of pushbacks: opposition MPs, human rights activists, refugee support groups and reporters. With the state of emergency declared, all those above are lawfully prohibited from the zone where most asylum seekers are present. “The guards may return people back to Belarus without any media attention”.

The situation in the Polish media sector doesn’t help. Since 2015, the government went to great lengths to subjugate all the media outlets it could – a campaign that was largely successful. In effect, all state-owned and state-controlled media companies, as well as numerous private outlets closely associated with the far-right cannot be considered independent in their editorial decisions. During the migrant crisis these outlets, in Mr Bialas’ words, “portrayed migrants as dangerous young men who want to use violence in Poland”, simply repeating the position of the Law and Justice government.

Poland still has a number of independent media outlets, which have received some success in exposing the illegal actions of Polish authorities. “They reported about the events which took place in one of the villages, where a number of families, including those with small children, were arrested by the Border Guard unit and then pushed back to Belarus”.

“These events got very significant attention from the media and the public, people were really outraged by what the media had shown them – that there are small children who should not be pushed back when they apply for asylum”.

All these reports helped to create public outrage in the EU on the situation. Showing the children and elderly victims of pushbacks helped combat the misleading agenda of the government: that those trying to cross the border are mostly hostile middle-aged men, as the government wanted the situation to be perceived as an opportunity to exploit Polish hospitality.

The bigger picture

According to a recent survey, nearly 55% of Poles think Poland shouldn’t be accepting migrants and refugees into its territory, while less than 7% have no opinion on the subject. Effectively, only four out of ten Poles support immigrants.

Interestingly, Poland is perfectly prepared to host a large group of refugees.

Mr Bialas explained that the infrastructure to host refugees was prepared several years ago. “The Polish authorities made preparations for a potential surge in the number of applications for asylum when the war broke up in Ukraine. It was expected that many applicants would come to Poland in 2014 and 2015. It did not happen, fortunately, but still, I think Poland would be able to accommodate up to 30,000 applicants”.

Moreover, Poland desperately requires immigration for its rapidly growing economy. “We do not have enough employees. There are a million or even two million Ukrainian nationals working in Poland, but it is not enough. In effect, I heard about companies that are recruiting drivers from the Philippines or people to pick tomatoes in South America. Poland has a really high demand from its labour market. So in my opinion, people who are trying to apply for asylum could easily be perceived as potential contributors to Polish society”.

Besides the humanitarian standards, Merkel’s main argument for accepting refugees into the EU at the beginning of the crisis was that people are a necessary injection into the low paid job market, which was suffering shortages in labour. This is also still the current case for Poland. Despite a large number of Ukrainian job immigrants in the country, the low desirability of poorly paid jobs creates a shortage that is yet to be filled.

“We don’t have enough employees. Even with 2 million Ukrainians working in Poland, it’s not enough. So we have a really high demand in our labour market and I think those people who are trying to apply for asylum could be somehow useful for Polish society.”

The preference from the Polish government for a certain type of migrant is evident. With more than 2 million Ukrainian immigrants accepted, the rejection to take refugees of Middle Eastern and African origin only supports this assertion, this division being developed as the official stance of PiS.

What makes the situation for those on the border more difficult is that these people are predominantly Muslim, and Poland’s ruling far-right is not even trying to hide its bias towards Islam. A Polish MP Dominik Tarczynski, in an interview for TRT World, gave a perfect illustration of the attitude of the Polish ruling class towards Muslim migrants saying that “not a single illegal, Muslim migrant will ever come to Poland” and hence, describing the 2015 refugee crisis as “a war of civilisations”.

“Is this perspective generally accepted by Polish society?”, I asked.

“Unfortunately, yes”, Jacek Bialas replied.