On our first attempt, a young Afghan man was too scared of being caught by border police to come out of hiding. That meant hours of driving on bumpy forest roads, most often to no avail. Over four days, we went with them as they attempted to find groups that had reached out to them. They are on standby day and night to go and help migrants who send out SOS messages from their phones. We followed Natalia, Alicia and Marianna, activists in Fundacja Ocalenie – the polish word for rescue, or salvation-, a foundation that has long supported asylum seekers. Many get stranded in the forest, trying to avoid border patrols who have a free rein to push them back to Belarus if they catch them. Only residents and security forces can get through.ĭay and night, groups of migrants manage to make their way past the barbed wire fence that lines the border, and through the three kilometre wide exclusion zone to what they hope will be their ticket to Europe. Journalists and NGOs are banned from the sealed area. We were at the edge of a no-go zone that runs along Poland’s 418 kilometre long border with Belarus, following Warsaw’s declared state of emergency in September. They politely, but firmly, ask us to reverse and go back to where we came from. The border police are used to seeing journalists like myself and my colleague Magdalena Chodownik turn up. This is what came to my mind when reaching the Krynki checkpoint near the border with Belarus, after a long drive through Poland’s quiet agricultural landscape.

After the European Union imposed sanctions on Minsk last june over serious human rights violations, a new humanitarian crisis is developing at the borders of Belarus and the EU.Įuropean leaders accuse Belarusian President Aleksander Lukashenko’s government of retaliating by pushing thousands of migrants into neighbouring eastern European countries, which in response have sealed their borders.Ī political tug of war which has turned the eastern borders of the union into a sometimes deadly trap for thousands of asylum seekers.Įuronews’ international correspondent Valerie Gauriat travelled to Poland, to witness their plight and the dismay of the local polish population.ĭuring my years of reporting, crossing police and military checkpoints when in conflict zones and authoritarian states has –sadly- been a familiar sight.īut it is much more awkward when you’re working in the middle of a conflict-free European Union member state.

Barbed wire fence 7 days to die