It has been more than three years since we first wrote about the dramatic humanitarian crisis at the Polish border with Belarus. After a year of the new government, you might be wondering what has changed there. To quote our new minister of justice: “We have the paradoxical situation that all the critics are being investigated and those who actually violate human rights have immunity”. Yes, he said these words before the last election. But unfortunately, his words are as true now as they were before.
Just over a year ago Poles went to the polling stations in records numbers to try and remove PiS from power. They succeeded, and while PiS still came out as most popular single party, they lacked any coalition capabilities and so, since Christmas 2023, Poland has been ruled by a Donald Tusk-led coalition between centre-right and centre-left parties. Most people, even left-leaning, voted for them as anything was better than PiS. But many probably truly believed that Tusk would bring a new standard to Polish politics. So far, he has managed to disappoint even those who didn’t have too high expectations in the first place. Even the hope that Poland would finally observe the rulings of international tribunals proved to be too much to ask, as proved recently when the government said that if Netanyahu comes to Poland, he “could feel safe”, despite the arrest warrant from the ICC.
True, Tusk’s government is trying to undo a lot of damage caused by PiS, starting with re-take of the public broadcaster, but with all the legal traps and corrupt pro-PiS judges placed by previous government in strategic places, it is not going smoothly – although countless investigations have started to bring some results (one of the PiS MPs even had to run abroad and claimed political asylum from Orban’s regime in Hungary).
But other than that, no major issue that had been at the centre of electoral campaign had been addressed. Just like it was always the case for the last 30 years: “now it’s not a good time to discuss women’s rights”. The LGBT community also hear that “they need to wait until after the election” (but, of course, there are always some elections). This is nothing new, Donald Tusk’s party was in power before and that was always their stance on those matters. But when it comes to border situation, they were criticizing PiS’ actions in strong words.
When professor Adam Bodnar, former Human Right Ombudsman, came to Edinburgh in 2023 to meet Polish diaspora (as he was standing in elections in a district that includes votes cast by Poles living abroad), he gave an interview to a podcast that I co-host. He was not mincing his words when my colleagues asked him about it, and please allow me to give you a longer excerpt from this interview:
“The push-back practices, by which I mean refusing to accept one’s asylum application and throwing him back over the border, are something unacceptable. I want to stress here that the fact that those people submit that claim does not guarantee them the right to remain in Poland. But there are relevant procedures that should be set in motion, those claims should be looked into to establish if said person is indeed a refugee or just someone who just bought a ticket from people smugglers. This is what state institutions are for, and it should be done according to the law.
At present, this is not the case. What we witness there is a gross violation of the human right. This also means that persons, who are committing those crimes of forcing people back across the border probably should also be brought to justice at some point. Of course, the officers of the Border Guard try to hide behind saying that they are just following orders. With this approach we could also analyse some crimes committed in the thirties of the last century, that the [legal] norm not necessarily justifies certain actions.
There are certain initiatives in Poland that are working out what action should be taken. I can recall that at one point such initiative was created in Kraków Institute of Criminal Law under professor Włodzimierz Wróbel, so we have a factual analysis ready.
It’s just we need to have independent prosecutions to carry on, as at present we can just write [indictments] for our drawer as at this point the prosecutors still hold an umbrella protecting the people related to the ruling party.[Polish idiom: indictments might as well go straight in the bin while PiS control the prosecution and justice system] Moreover, when the prosecutor is persecuting critics of this government, like the journalist Piotr Maślak, who is under criminal investigation, and [legendary member of the anti-communist opposition] Władysław Frasyniuk or [actress] Barbara Kurdej-Szatan, they all all under criminal investigation for slander (…). We have the paradoxical situation that all the critics are being investigated and those who actually violate human rights have immunity”.
I wanted to use that extensive quote, because now I would like to take it apart and set it against the background of how the situation looks now.
Professor Bodnar was successful in the election and secured a seat in the Senate, the Polish upper chamber of the parliament, and he became a Minister of Justice and Prosecutor General in the Donald Tusk government – although those two functions were only joined by PiS to allow political control over prosecution and he immediately started work on separating them. This is just one of the many issues that need to be solved to bring the justice system back to an acceptable standard after the damage caused by PiS, and it has to be said, that he is working hard on this front. So surely, since HE is now in charge of the prosecution, he’d immediately start bringing human rights violators to justice? Not really.
I contacted the Ministry of Justice press service asking for comment in relation to the words quoted above, and I was just brushed away with the explanation that the “situation at the border is not within the scope of the Ministry of Justice’s interests”. When I pushed further, quoting minister Bodnar again and pointing out that I am asking about bringing criminals to justice, I was promised I will be contacted back. That was several months ago and I am still waiting…
So I can only speculate why Professor Bodnar turned out to be such a disappointment. The problem is that trying to bring order to the border and force soldiers to observe procedures would be acting against Donald Tusk’s wishes. “It’s the biggest lie of the recent years that to protect its borders the state has to be cruel, ruthless and completely stripped of humanitarian rules” – he said, during a Women’s Congress in 2022 – “nobody should die in the bushes of cold, hunger and sickness in Poland, no matter what is their skin colour, where they are running away from and why”. But this Tusk is no more. As soon as he grabbed power, he apparently came to the conclusion that not only is having border guards violating human rights at the border actually fine, but he want to go even further. In October last year, he announced he wants to suspend the right to asylum altogether, which would be in breach of not only international convention, but also the Polish Constitution.
It has to be mentioned that a similar law was introduced in Finland, which faces similar problem with Russia sending migrants over the border. But there is a large difference. Under Finnish law (which was only temporary, and parliament is now debating if it should be extended) the right to asylum can be limited under certain circumstances, but the fact that the law still provides exception for people who face death, for example, implies that their cases will still be at least briefly analysed. In Poland migrants are just thrown over the barbed wire fence back into Belarus (sometimes literally, as in the case of a pregnant woman from the Congo, who lost her baby as a result of being thrown over barbed wire like a sack of potatoes) by default for well over 3 years now. They are routinely refused their rights to apply for asylum and even if they do, the soldiers often lie that they never tried to – sometimes after forcing them to sign documents they can’t understand.
That’s why the work of humanitarian organisations such as Grupa Granica is so crucial. Their volunteers not only provide medical assistance, fresh clothes and food to people hiding in the forest (as being spotted by the soldiers or the border guards almost certainly ends in a push-back, often being beaten and humiliated in the process) but also give advice or offer legal assistance. Sometimes they help by by obtaining power of attorney to deal with the authorities on their behalf, sometimes just by acting as witnesses where refugees submit their asylum claim to the soldiers. In February last year, a spokesmen for Grupa Granica told my podcast that for them the new government brought no change. People still die at the border – according to the report published last summer, at least 130 deaths have been documented up to that point.
If anything, the situation is getting worse. Donald Tusk’s government not only decided to continue a controversial project started by PiS of building a barrier along the Polish-Belarussian border, but also continues to work on the project in PiS style. The work is being carried out under doubtful “special case” laws, allowing the contractor to ignore building regulations or environmental laws. It emerged recently that a wide belt of forest has been chopped down along the banks of the border river Bug, including trees in the nature reserves and under stricter protection. Government claims this was done to “improve visibility”, but the work was slammed both by security specialists, civil engineer and environmental specialists alike, with one of the biggest concerns being that the trees were actually holding the high bank of the river together and removing them will accelerate erosion.
Those decisions are strictly dictated by the populist politics of Tusk who, after securing support from the left who hoped he’ll sort problems such as women or LGBT rights, now is trying to play to the right-leaning voter, posing as a tough leader who will not back down from protecting our borders from wild hordes of savage migrants. The construction of the barrier along the 172 km of the border along the river will costs hundreds of millions. Meanwhile, according to the Polish Border Force, fewer than 400 people tried to cross the river last year. The comparison with the Tory obsession with “stopping the boats” is inevitable. And all this activity is still not enough to assure our Schengen partners that our borders are well protected – as proven by the fact that Germany re-introduced checks at the Polish border (which leads to such frustration that a Polish citizen who lives in cross-border town of Zgorzelec/Görlitz decided to sue Germany). Even our own Human Rights Ombudsman argued, that the whole “buffer zone” fails to limit illegal crossing.
Last but not least, the constant presence of the military is tiresome for the local community. Local reporters such as Piotr Czaban have been documenting numerous cases of the soldiers, border guards and police officers harassing local residents and humanitarian activists. But even if they don’t actively seek to do it, their presence is causing issues. The unpaved roads, still very common in the rural areas near the border, are being destroyed by the army vehicles despite protests – questioning whether soldiers looking for refugees really need to patrol the border in armoured people transporters. The local residents regularly report military lorries speeding through their once quiet villages.
Local animals also suffer. The primary forests of Podlasie region, which borders Belarus, happen to be one of the last habitats of European bison living in the wild. Several of those have already been hit by speeding military vehicles. Countless animals also die impaled on the razor wire that has been spread along the border with no regard to human or environmental safety. The barrier is also blocking their migration paths.
But after seeing that the new government will also have their backs, the military and the border force now believe they are above the law. Local residents regularly report seeing armed soldiers buying alcohol while on duty, but their concerns were ignored. Only after two of them illegally stopped a random car only for one of the soldiers to open fire on it with an assault rifle (a 13-year-old girl leaped out of the moving car just before her seat got riddled with holes), the army ordered prohibition. Ironically, the soldier was taking part in an operation under codename “Safe Podlasie”.
Safe for whom? Surely not for the migrants, not for local residents, and, as we’re learning recently, still not for the critics of the anti-refugee politics of the government. Aforementioned reporter Piotr Czaban had just been sued by the border guard for slander, after he published a reportage showing the Border Force transporting refugees in worse conditions than are required for cattle. In one of such case, a group of handcuffed migrants were put, with no seatbelts, in the back of the 4×4 vehicle which was driven so dangerously that it overturned just a few hundred metres down the road. In other footage, the captured migrants are forced into the cargo space of a pick-up truck. Piotr has now been sued by the Border Force for slander, in what is clearly a SLAPP type of case. At the same time a group of humanitarian activists that agreed to give some refugees a short lift in their car are also in court facing a trumped up charge of human trafficking.
In that 2023 interview, Professor Bodnar mentioned the upcoming Agnieszka Holland movie “Green Border”. He said this would completely change perceptions of the situation.
The movie came and disappeared from the silver screens and yet, today, Donald Tusk does the opposite to what he was saying just a couple of years ago. Adam Bodnar, who was very adamant about the need to bring criminals from the border to justice, has now shut up like a clam as soon as he got himself into a position where he could actually do something; and a young MP, Franek Sterczewski, who three years ago heroically tried to break through a police cordon to personally deliver humanitarian help to people trapped at the border, today gets very annoyed when asked why he suddenly got so quiet when it’s now his government that does exactly what he was fiercely protesting against. In a private message on Twitter in September, he told me he is “doing what he can”, “in contact with NGOs” and “active in a parliamentary commission” “working on bringing systemic changes”. I guess we should be happy. Many people described his behaviour from three years ago as “reckless”, “stupid” and “unworthy of an MP.” He certainly sounds like a real politician now.
And people are still regularly dying at the border. The documented number is likely to be reaching 150 by now. I am sure we’ll be finding bones in the woods for decades to come.
