A tale of two borders: while Poland welcomes Ukrainian refugees, children are stuck freezing in a forest

About 2.3 million Ukrainian refugees have fled to Poland. At major border crossings such as Medyka, they’re welcomed with free SIM cards, access to social services, and rights to live, work and study in the European Union. The support from the local community has been huge.

But less than 400 kilometres north of Medyka, asylum seekers are treated very differently. 

Sirwan has been stuck in the snow-dusted forests between Belarus and Poland for nearly five months with his wife and three children. Neither country will accept him, and he’s been forced back to the Belarusian border by Polish officials three times. His family fled Kurdistan in Iraq to get their daughter medical treatment. Along their journey, they met up with another family and now camp in the forest together. There are seven children in his group stuck in no man’s land between the two countries. 

The sound of heavy artillery echoes around them — additional NATO forces have arrived on the border to conduct military training and exercises following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. 

“We’re in danger,” Sirwan tells Crikey. “My daughter is sick — we need help.” 

The Polish, Latvian and Lithuanian governments established an exclusion zone across their borders with Belarus. This zone is three kilometres wide and spans 400 kilometres, running through a UNESCO world heritage-listed forest. As of September, NGOs, police, doctors and journalists are barred from entering the border regions in Poland, forcing Médecins Sans Frontières to withdraw from the region. At least 21 refugees died in 2021 while stuck between the borders. 

The refugee influx is partly caused by the Belarusian government — in November, the EU accused Belarus’s leader, Alexander Lukashenko, of provoking a refugee crisis by promising refugees a safe passage to the EU. Refugees were lured with false promises of easy entry to the EU by Belarusian officials, Amnesty International found. In some cases, Belarusian border guards drove refugees to the exclusion zone before using dogs to chase them into the forest. There are multiple allegations of violence and uses of force.  

When they arrive at the EU’s borders, they’re denied entry and told to go back to Belarus — often having to cross a fast-flowing river. NGOs working in the space tell Crikey some have been made to cross 24 times. 

Rawa Jalil was stuck in the forest for 40 days until the United Nations International Office of Migration intervened and sent him back to Iraq at a cost of 100 euros. He was in the forests between Poland and Belarus but managed to break through the border before getting caught in Warsaw. On his second attempt, he tried to gain entry to the EU through Latvia, where he found himself stuck.

“I was like a football — going between the two borders,” he tells Crikey. “The Belarus border guards were violent — they used electric rods on me four times.” 

He said for 10 nights he slept in a tent and on other nights under the stars or converted warehouses in freezing temperatures. Many of his group got sick; they would seek out border guards, and if their case was severe the guards would transport them to hospital. “But fortunately, no one died,” he said. 

He’s been back in Iraq since late January and said he wouldn’t try to gain entry to the EU again because he’s worried he would get stuck between borders and wouldn’t survive. 

“Nobody spoke with us, no organisation met with us — it’s so hard to live between two walls,” he says. 

The Polish government is currently constructing a 186-kilometre fence topped with barbed wire along its border with Belarus. More than 150 NGOs from 25 countries have signed a petition urging the government to halt construction, citing environmental issues and human rights concerns. 

Beata Siemazko works with Grupa Granica, an NGO that focuses specifically on those coming through the Belarus-Polish border, and lives near the border herself. She’s currently hosting a Ukrainian family in her home, and calls the government’s two-sided policy “hypocritical”. 

“They are treated like criminals — the refugees tell me the police keep them in prison for up to 48 hours — then are pushed back into [the exclusion zone]. Some of them have been pushed back 24 times.”

Poland has previously had a hard-line stance on refugees, agreeing to accept just 100 Syrian refugees between 2016 and 2020. One 2013 study found that nearly 70% of Poles didn’t want non-white people living in their country.

The difference in treatment between these refugees and those from Ukraine is alarming, says Karolina Wierzbinska, International Organisation Manager from Polish human rights agency Homo Faber. Based in Lublin, some 400 kilometres from the Ukrainian border, Homo Faber has established a hotline to connect Ukrainian refugees with services and helps coordinate support. She also works for Grupa Granica.

“It’s quite stark that there’s a huge fence and a massive blockade on the Belarus side and then on the other side, people can come in freely,” she said. 

“I have a moral problem that I’m sitting here and I’m not in the forest.” 

Wierzbinska said a key issue at the Belarus border was troops on the ground, who are operating under emergency measures and who report to the national defence instead of the prime minister. They’re mostly young, she said, with right-wing ideologies. She said encounters with them had been “scary”. 

“It means there are two sides of Polish law and two types of treatments for refugees — meaning we welcome Ukrainians, but helping Muslim people cross the border is illegal.”