The Migrants in the Ancient Forest
In August 2021, thirty-two Afghans who had fled their country just before the Taliban took power arrived at the border hoping to seek asylum. Poland refused to deal with them. The stranded Afghans therefore found themselves in a muddy no-man’s land, flanked by armed border guards on both sides. Technically, they were already in Poland, in a small village called Usnarz Górny. There was no fence there, allowing locals and journalists to interact with the refugees. Images of an Afghan woman camping with a gray cat have gone viral. The European Court of Human Rights quickly ordered Poland to provide assistance and temporary shelter to the migrants.
Within weeks, Poland announced a state of emergency and closed areas near the border to doctors, aid workers and journalists, among others. Polish journalist Aga Suszko, who contributed to the reporting of this article, recalls: “I’m in a democratic country, I’m covering something that’s happening in front of my eyes and which is very significant, and all of a sudden: ‘You can’t see it, so you can’t talk about it, because you can’t see it.’ »
Illustration by Anuj Shrestha
The weather in the forest got colder and the rain set in. The Afghans slept on the ground. In September of the same year, the Polish Interior Minister held a press conference, broadcast on national television, during which he showed a photo, allegedly of a man having sex with a cow, and claimed that it had been discovered on a device confiscated from a migrant.
In October, migrants attempted more than ten thousand crossings (Polish border guards count crossings, not people), and Poland adopted a law effectively legalizing “pushbacks.” In cases of pushback, authorities force migrants to cross the border immediately after arrival, often violently, without considering asylum requests or other needs. (Guards often send them through the front doors.) The law appears to violate the non-refoulement principle of European and international law, which prohibits returning people to places where their lives or freedom are threatened. Afghans would clearly be in danger if sent home. Even if they were sent back only to Belarus, they would run a risk: border guards there regularly beat migrants who failed to complete their journey to Poland. However, Poland pushed back the thirty-two Afghans, including a fifteen-year-old girl, arguing that they had remained outside Polish jurisdiction all this time and that non-refoulement therefore did not apply.
The following month, hundreds of desperate and abandoned migrants, frozen in makeshift camps on the Belarusian side of the border, attempted to cross the barbed wire fence into Poland. Polish border guards responded with tear gas and water cannons. “I had my life before 2021 and my life after,” Suszko, the journalist, told me. She had grown up hearing about how, in the 1980s, the Solidarity movement heroically overthrew the oppressive communist regime, transforming the country into a democracy that generally respected human rights and the rule of law. “It was the death of Poland as I knew it,” she said.
Since 2021, Poland has built the permanent border wall that Ahmed crossed; razor wire fences stand on both sides. Thousands of security officers are now stationed there, along with cameras, thermal and motion sensors, night vision devices and other surveillance tools.
