N°67 — The Białowieża trap

Hajnówka, 21st January 2026,

I remember the night our lives changed forever. I live in Hajnówka, a small Polish town 20 kilometres from the border with Belarus. One morning in August 2021, I woke up and all the media were suddenly talking about refugees! Hundreds of people were apparently stranded at the border, in the Białowieża Forest, near my home. They couldn’t turn back to Minsk and weren’t allowed to enter Poland either.

Lots of news outlets were saying that these people were “terrorists”, that the men were going to “rape women” and that they represented “a danger” to our society. I wanted to know if any of it was true, and the easiest way to find out was to go and see for myself what was happening. So I took a rucksack with plenty of water and food and headed for the “las”, which means forest in Polish.

After walking through the woods for a while, I came across a family from Afghanistan. We exchanged a few words. I don’t remember how long they had been wandering around, but they were relieved to see me. For my part, I didn’t perceive any danger in these people; I just saw human beings. And so I helped them.

That was four and a half years ago. Since then, I have returned to Białowieża countless times, sometimes alone, sometimes with my family or other volunteers, and now with members of POPH (Podlaskie Ochotnicze Pogotowie Humanitarne, or Podlasie Volunteer Humanitarian Service, editor’s note), the organisation I belong to.

POPH has set up a “numer alarmowy”, an emergency hotline that exiles stranded in the forest can contact us on when they need help. It operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And we receive messages all the time.

Last time, it was in the afternoon. A group of six people from Sudan needed help. As usual, we prepared hot soup, hot tea, warm clothes (at the moment, the temperature is around -15 degrees at night in the Białowieża Forest, editor’s note), food and first aid kits. Then we set off into the forest, but we weren’t able to get very far because the police were nearby.

In March, the government suspended the right to seek asylum for migrants arriving in Poland from the Belarusian border. When they’re caught by border guards, they are sent back to Belarus. Sometimes we receive messages, so we set off, and then we notice that the phone of the person who contacted us has been switched off; this usually means that they’ve been caught. Often we then have to hide from the police to avoid being spotted and putting them at risk.

That time, with the Sudanese group, we had to wait 22 hours — and they had to wait another 22 hours on top of that — before we could come to their aid. As soon as the police left, after almost a day of being unable to do anything, we set off again and finally found them. They were exhausted. We gave them shoes, socks, food etc…

Most of the people who try to cross the border come from Africa, Morocco or Syria, for example, and there are also lots from Afghanistan and Pakistan. When we reach them, they have usually already been on a very long and arduous journey. It’s difficult to move around in the dense Białowieża Forest. Their needs are therefore more or less the same every time. They haven’t drunk anything for a long time and haven’t eaten for several days. Some have injured themselves along the way and also need medical attention.

It is also often the first time during their journey that they meet people who treat them like normal human beings. When they realise that we don’t pose a threat, they thank us for helping them.

Unfortunately, we can’t do any more than that. They can’t follow us; they have to remain in the forest. It’s too risky otherwise, because if they’re spotted, they’ll be sent back across the border. It’s very hard.

There are as many people today, in Białowieża, as there were in 2021, the night when everything changed. And since the right to asylum has been suspended, we also now find a lot of dead bodies. They sometimes end up in the Bug River (which flows along the border, editor’s note).

I am very angry with our government. They’re allowing border guards and the army to break the law. Our country does not respect human rights, our country does not respect the right of asylum for refugees. (Since the beginning of the migration crisis, numerous incidents involving the authorities have been reported by various organisations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, and systematic deportations at the border, without individual examination, violate European asylum law, editor’s note.) We, the citizens at the border, have therefore taken matters into our own hands, but we do not always have the power to fight on equal terms.

Mateusz