Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 25th of September 2021

Case name: 20210925-BEL/POL002

Situation: 12 people stuck between Belarus and Poland

Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded

Place of Incident: Belarus/Poland

Summary of the Case:

On September 25, the Alarm Phone was alerted to a group of 12 people in distress on the Polish side of the border to Belarus (GPS position: N 53 36' 18"; E 23 37' 05" @ 13.47 CEST 23 September).

We received the info from a relative who told us that the travelers had been out in the open for days, they lacked food and water and their health situation was critical. According to the relative, one person of the group had died of water poisoning – this information we were not able to confirm.

We informed UNHCR and Red Cross in Poland and Belarus via E-mail about the distress case. Several calls to the UNHCR and Red Cross in Poland as well as to the police station of the closest city nearby (Bialystok) were left unanswered. We could only once establish contact to the Police headquarter in Warsaw but the officer on duty just told us to call 112.

In the afternoon we received a new GPS position (53.6677780, 23.6011160 @17:39 CEST 25 September) which showed that the group had been heading north along the border and moved back to the Belarusian side. Our contact informed us that they were safe but under police watch.

We then lost contact to the group and only found out later that they had been intercepted by the Polish police, pushed back and arrested in Belarus.

We highly condemn these politics that are currently willingly accepting the deaths on the border between Belarus and Poland!