“How many dead bodies are there in the forest?” Read a sign mentioning several deaths in the forests and swamps of the border area
Thousands marched in Warsaw on 17 October in solidarity with migrants and asylum seekers on the Poland-Belarus border who were pushed back by Polish authorities.
In the march, which was organized under the slogan “Stop atrocities on the border”, marchers accused Polish authorities of brutal behavior in pushing migrants back and enforcing a state of emergency at the border, which left human rights activists there. stopped going. help people.
“How many dead bodies are there in the forest?” Read a sign mentioning the many deaths in the forests and swamps of the border area.
Many Poles have been moved by images of families with young children who made it to Poland and then were deported across the border to Belarus.
“What our government is doing is a disgrace,” said Dorota Moran, a 39-year-old preschool physician for autistic children who marched with two of her three children. “We are in the EU and we must seek support from the EU. But first we have to be human and protect families and children.” Another demonstrator, Marcin Kakprzak, traveled through the city of Plock to protest.
“We are horrified by what is happening on our eastern border,” said the 45-year-old, with a sign that he loves his neighbor. “We see the people and their suffering,” he said. “We don’t see the color of their skin, their caste or their religion.”
For nearly two months, a large number of people from the Middle East and Africa have been trying to illegally enter Poland from Belarus. Polish officials have accused Belarus and Russia of encouraging migration to trigger instability within the European Union, calling it a “hybrid war”.
This week the Polish parliament adopted a law allowing asylum applications to be arbitrarily rejected by migrants. The UN refugee agency said the law “undermines the fundamental right to seek asylum as enshrined in international and EU law”.
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