For the past two years, cold and frightened migrants from Africa and the Middle East have ricocheted back and forth across the nether-world that separates Belarus from democratic Europe. From 1843 magazine
n an October evening in 2021, a group of taxis stopped at the edge of a dense forest on the western border of Belarus. Husam, a 38-year-old barber from Syria, got out and peered nervously into the labyrinth of oaks, ashes and pines that stood between him and a new life.Syria’s civil war
. Husam decided that this was his chance. He sold his house and managed to make contact with a smuggler’s agent in Turkey, who outlined the terms of service: Husam should transfer some money to a bank account in Germany and the smugglers would provide a taxi to take him from Minsk to the very west of Belarus and maps showing how to reach the Polish border from there. It sounded straightforward – the smugglers were even supplying a taxi to pick him up once he crossed into Poland.
The Syrians started digging under the Belarusian fence, careful not to trigger the sensors. Eventually they excavated a tunnel big enough for them to crawl through. To Husam, accustomed to the salty, sun-warmed air of the Mediterranean coast, the earth smelled of decay. To the east of the Schengen area is a border that is, at least on paper, far less perilous than the Mediterranean sea which runs across its southern edge. Marking the boundary between theand the post-Soviet states of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine is a lush belt of forest, broken by meadows, fields and villages.Aid workers often find abandoned camps near the Belarusian border. Volunteers collect the detritus and transport it out of the forest .
In an orchestrated campaign that reached from Minsk to Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Lebanon and beyond, Belarus sold tourist visas, co-ordinated flights to Minsk from the Middle East and disseminated false information on social media about how simple crossing in thewas. Immigrants faced no obstacles when they arrived in Minsk or ventured to the border zone, and Belarusian border guards even helped them reach the fences where Polish and Lithuanian territory began.
Belarus itself has no desire to harbour the migrants pushed back into the forest. Instead, for the past two years, cold and frightened Algerians, Afghans, Egyptians, Iraqis, Lebanese, Pakistanis, Sudanese, Syrians, Tunisians and Yemenis have ricocheted back and forth across the nether-region that separates Belarus from democratic Europe.usam and his group turned around and walked for an hour back to the Belarusian fence. This time they deliberately triggered the sensors to alert the guards.
After that the days started to blur. Always being taken to the border, then forced back, then pushed forward again. Once he actually made it into Polish territory but his Latakian “family” were caught by the guards, so he felt obliged to return with them. He trudged around, longing to sleep in a warm bed and discard the 25kg backpack that made his shoulders and spine ache.
Here Belarusian guards took them to a makeshift detention centre where they robbed them, forced them to strip, then kicked and beat them for three hours. Husam remembers dogs being set on him. At the end of the ordeal they were cast out with their phones broken to fend for themselves. After this he joined up with a new group of Syrians: three men in their 20s and a fragile, quiet 16-year-old boy named Ubadah. The crew traipsed aimlessly through the snowy forest for two weeks. Their supplies dwindled. Ubadah, who suffered from epilepsy, ran out of his medication. One day he collapsed on the hard, cold ground.
First the Polish government declared a state of emergency at the border. The pristine forest was scarred with military infrastructure. Tourist businesses lost all their income overnight, as visitors were prohibited, and ordinary Polish people living in the area had to smuggle in their own families when they wanted to see them. Journalists and aid workers were forbidden to enter. Those who flouted the rules were detained and fined.
Neither the wall nor the aggressive response of the border guards has stopped people from coming, however. When the Polish government lifted the state of emergency in the border area in July, the first tourists to return to the forest might well have found themselves coming face-to-face with migrants there.
France Dernières Nouvelles, France Actualités
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