Rape threats for refugees caught in fearful game of cat and mouse
Migrants who cross from Belarus into Poland face attack, trapped between authorities on both sides
They were a group of three – a husband and wife from Iraq, and one man from Syria. Like hundreds of others, they had crossed the Belarusian border and spent days hiking through the Bialowieza forest with little food or water.
So when they saw three men they took for Poles, they pleaded for a drink. Over the next few minutes they were subjected to an unprovoked and nightmarish beating with metal bars.
The attackers demanded money, belongings, and mobile phones.
When they refused, the men grabbed the woman in the group and began removing her clothes, in an unmistakable threat of rape. At that point the men surrendered, handed over everything they had, and the attackers departed – leaving the woman’s husband sprawled on the forest floor, immobile and losing consciousness.
The attackers have not been identified and it is not clear whether the assault, which occurred on Thursday afternoon in woodland just off a road near the town of Hajnowka, was planned.
But it has alarmed the loose network of sympathetic locals and rights activists who have taken it upon themselves to save the lives of thousands of the migrants crossing the frontier.
The Border Group, the main alliance of humanitarians providing emergency aid, say it is the first case they know about involving an attack on refugees who have crossed into Poland, since they began operating.
“Some far-right groups recently said they intended to start ‘patrols’ on the border to catch immigrants,” said Marysia Zlonkiewicz, one of the activists at the scene on Thursday evening. “So we are very worried by the implications.”
Thursday’s attack occurred as thousands of far-right activists marched through Warsaw to mark Polish Independence Day.
The immigration crisis on Poland’s border with Belarus has exacerbated a gaping division in Polish society.
The Right-wing government here has taken a hard line, passing a “push back” law to allow police, soldiers and border guards to force illegal entrants back towards Belarus.
Volunteers from the Border Group say that leaves them facing constant obstruction. Some describe the humanitarian operation as “clandestine”.
And the policy has turned the forest into a trap.
Belarusian border guards and thugs, wearing civilian clothes, are also violently preventing anyone who has crossed from turning back.
So, groups of Iraqi and Syrian civilians wander the forest for days and sometimes weeks, in a fearful game of cat and mouse with both countries’ authorities, before emerging. The tale of their ordeal can be read in the belongings they leave behind at campsites deep in the forest.
Belarusian Sim cards; sodden sleeping bags; nappies; Arabic vaccination certificates and negative fit-to-fly tests issued in Dubai litter the moss and dry leaves in the forests around Hajnowka.
The fate of the group assaulted on Thursday was typical of the push-back policy.
Shaken and terrified that her husband would die, the Iraqi woman and the Syrian man ran to the nearby road to flag down a passing car and ask for help.
The first car to stop was driven by Pawel Cywinski, a Border Group activist who was passing by chance.
He called an ambulance that took the Iraqi man to hospital, but the driver refused to carry his wife, citing Covid-19 restrictions. She was left behind in the woods, with their Syrian companion, and no way to contact her husband.
Then, without warning, police arrived and cordoned off the area. “I don’t know who called them. We didn’t,” Mr Cywinski told The Daily Telegraph later.
Officers were polite, but firmly barred The Telegraph and activists who arrived from accessing the scene, including a volunteer Arabic translator.
The only person who could communicate between the victims of the assault and the police, the activists, or anyone else, was forced to stand 50 yards away and translate questions from Polish over the phone.
The account of their ordeal described here was narrated by the Syrian member of the group via that conversation.
The standoff went on for hours while volunteers pleaded for the woman to be reunited with her husband and argued that the refugees must be taken to the nearest border guards office for official processing of their asylum requests.
It grew dark, and temperatures dropped sharply. Suddenly, the army appeared with a heavy lorry. A helicopter flew low over the black woods in the direction of the military exclusion zone next to the border.
Then, within moments, the Iraqi woman and the Syrian man were whisked away. The negotiations, Mr Cywinski said, had failed.
“They are taking them to Bialowieska,” he said, referring to village inside the forbidden zone near the border that has become a temporary base for army and police in the current confrontation with Belarus. “In our experience, that means they are going to be pushed back.”
“The woman is in deep distress. She has been separated from her husband and they have no phones. All we know is the name of the hospital, but they won’t let us in because of Covid.”
All the activists could do was file a police report about the assault.