Volunteers struggle to help 3,000 stranded on Poland’s border as winter approaches

For one Polish activist who has sought to provide support for stranded migrants along the country’s border with Belarus, despair is rising as there are too few volunteers to help more than 3,000 stranded people.

“People seem not to care that much about children dying in the woods,” Grzegorz, an organiser with Polish humanitarian group Granica – Polish for border – told The National.

“With freezing temperatures ahead, the worst sights are yet to come. They can’t go anywhere. Polish authorities do not feel obliged to provide these refugees with shelter or any kind of help.”

Granica and other groups like Medycy na Granicy – Medics at the Border – are struggling not only with immediate needs on the ground but the response of the Warsaw government, which has sent in the army to seal its frontier.

An umbrella group of 14 social organisations and activists working for human rights is appealing to the Polish government to create a humanitarian bridge for the thousands trapped at the border. It says they are pawns being used by the Belarus government.

“We remind all parties that migrants are not aggressors but hostages of [Belarus’s President Alexander] Lukashenko’s regime,” said the group.

With aid agencies and volunteer medics forbidden from the Polish exclusion zone, local people have in some cases stepped in to help migrants.

The Green Light campaign, launched a few weeks ago, gives locals simple instructions: those living along the Poland-Belarus border, and elsewhere, who are willing to help migrants and refugees crossing the border are asked to put a green light in a window or above their front door.

A 15-minute film on YouTube about the work local activists and volunteers are doing in Poland, which has been viewed more than 40,000 times, pieces together a picture of the dire situation for migrants.

Kamil Syller, a lawyer and founder of the Green Light campaign, who lives four kilometres from the border, said rumours have left him concerned about conditions in the forests.

“We don’t know if the information about dozens of bodies lying there is true, because no one has seen them, no one can go,” he says in the video.

Others describe finding people on the streets severely dehydrated and kneeling before them when given water.

Having declared a state of emergency around a threekilometre exclusion zone in September, Poland has barred non-government organisations, journalists and non-residents from accessing the forested area.

Under difficult circumstances, activists and volunteers have been supplying people they find with basics, such as water, blankets and food.

“Every day, I hear stories of terror, violence, repression towards refugees,” said Sanna Figlarowicz, a Polish volunteer who has been messaging migrants in the forest for weeks.

Ms Figlarowicz documents the information she receives, and is particularly concerned about the people she believes are especially vulnerable.

In October, the Polish Parliament passed a new law authorising border guards to push back and expel illegal migrants, despite international obligations to give protection to asylum seekers, even if they have crossed a border illegally.

Human rights organisations are alarmed about the consequences for migrants.

“Other activists tell horrifying stories about Belarusian border guards who were forcing [migrants] into deep rivers and pushing them out of the forests straight into the cold and rain,” Grzegorz said.

“People are being tortured, yet Poland and Brussels are doing nothing to help them.

“These people are not groups of thugs who came here to attack the Polish border. The only thing they want is to ward off the cold – to eat.”

Activists are appealing to the Polish government to create a humanitarian bridge for the thousands trapped at the border