‘We used to love the forest but now it is just a place of human suffering’
For most of her life, Kasia Wappa has enjoyed the privilege of living near Poland’s Bialowieza National Park. Home to wolves, lynx, and the last wild population of European bison, it is a true wilderness and attracts tourists from around the globe.
But what she has seen in the forest over the past two months has left her shaken. “It is a humanitarian crisis on a scale not seen here since the Second World War,” she said.
“We used to love the forest, to walk the dog there. Now it is a place of human suffering.” In fact, she added: “It is a war. But it is a war on the quiet. In a regular war bombs are falling and houses are collapsing. But because on the surface it looks normal here, some people say what is happening is fake news.” That infuriates her. Emaciated groups of Middle Eastern immigrants, apparently herded towards the border at the behest of president Alexander Lukashenko in retaliation for EU sanctions on Belarus, first began to emerge from the woods in September.
Most had spent days on end without food or water. They were generally suffering from hypothermia and exhaustion, and often sick from drinking swamp water.
Horrified, a number of locals who had previously banded together to fight a government plan to log the forest in 2017 activated the same networks to offer some kind of help.
Mrs Wappa, an English teacher, from Hajnowka, a town on the forest’s western edge, began by donating clothes and ended up helping rescue parties retrieve starving people from the woods. She said: “People say about 10 victims have been confirmed. But we have met many people on the verge of dying who would have died for sure.”
The Polish government had a different solution. It imposed a two-mile deep security cordon the entire length of its border with Belarus in a bid to curb the tide of illegal immigration.
All non-residents, including reporters, are banned, creating a media blackout that helps hide the scale of the crisis.
For locals, “the zone” has meant economic dislocation, the separation of friends and families, and the near criminalisation of the basic urge to help other humans in desperate need.
“The villages around there are living mainly from tourists. And the autumn is usually the time for tourists. It is mating time for deer, the colours are very nice, and it is easier to see the bison and wolves,” said Adam Wajrak, a naturalist who lives in the forest.
“But the whole of Bialowieiza county is now divided by the military zone almost in half. No one will come to my village if they cannot go to the national park or visit Bialowiezka, which is 7km away but inside the zone.” The tourists have vanished.
A proposed new border fence along the Polish frontier would slice straight through the forest, affecting fragile wildlife populations that currently use the unpopulated no-man’s land along the frontier as a place of refuge.
“The razor wire is especially dangerous for the lynx. We have a very small genetically fragile population close to extinction. And if they go ahead with this, then in 10 years we will not have any,” Mr Wajrak said.
It also means rescuers find themselves acting more like insurgents, operating at night and trying to evade police patrols.
On one recent occasion two residents found a migrant near death.
When an ambulance refused a call out to their remote location, they fashioned their own stretcher out of sticks and coats and carried the man out themselves – dodging police patrols as they went. After sunset yesterday another checkpoint appeared on the edge of Hajnuk, with officers searching the boot of every vehicle entering or leaving.
“People are afraid of war,” said Mrs Wappa. “They have an idea that the EU doesn’t care about us and they know Lukashenko is the leader of a state more radical than any other.
“They are afraid any small provocation could start a conflict. And yes. I am a little afraid too.”