Poland-Belarus Border Under Tusk: ‘Patriot’ Patrols, Slashed Tires, Despair – Analysis

By Claudia Ciobanu

In the 3 years since the migrant crisis began, little has changed even though a new Polish government is in power. A visit by BIRN to the border found a bleak situation, with civilian patrols, negative attitudes to migrants and high daily attempted crossings.

“We try to organise the night patrols as often as possible, with the goal of uncovering attempts to cross the border illegally,” Piotr from the Hajnowka Rifle Unit Association, one of a growing number of grassroots groups that organise border patrols to apprehend migrants, tells BIRN.

Piotr – he asks his surname be withheld – says his group has actually been active in the forests on the Polish-Belarusian border since the start of the migration crisis in 2021, but others have increasingly mobilised over the last few months since a Polish soldier died in June after being stabbed by a migrant. 

The rise of these ‘patriotic’ patrols roaming the forests, together with the loss of hope among migrants and the activists who help them that international law will ever be fully respected on this border, is creating an oppressive, bleak atmosphere in the area that many feel is near the tensest it’s ever been.

In a sign of how jittery and polarised the mood in the border villages is, this BIRN reporter had her car tyre slashed a few days into a recent trip to the border to investigate conditions there. 

Together with a group of foreign journalists, this reporter left the car for ten minutes to buy food in a local shop in Bobrowniki, next to the border with Belarus. Upon returning to the vehicle, the journalists found the tyre slashed, while a local man shouted at the group: “Refugees! Activists!”

Out of sight, out of mind

That the situation at the border today is so tense might come as a surprise to many, both in Poland and abroad.

The Poland-Belarus border crisis first hit the headlines back in August 2021, when migrants from the Middle East and Africa made over 3,500 attempts to cross into Poland during that month, according to data from the Polish Border Guard.

The massing of tens of thousands of migrants on the EU’s borders with Belarus was widely seen as an attempt by Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko to foment a humanitarian crisis in retaliation for sanctions that Brussels imposed on Minsk for the 2020 rigged presidential election and subsequent violent crackdown on protesters, as well as to help its regional ally Russia in that country’s efforts to destabilise NATO and the EU in the runup to its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

The peak of the Poland-Belarus border crisis was November of that year, when over 17,000 attempted crossings were made in a single month, with video evidence suggesting that many of these were being orchestrated and forced by the Belarusian border guards.

Since then, EU pressure exerted on airlines to halt flights from these countries to Belarus has led to a shifting of the Eastern Land Border Route in such a way that most migrants now first land in Russia, before being driven to Minsk and then bussed to the border with Poland.

The nationalist-populist Law and Justice (PiS) government of the time responded by imposing a state of emergency over a 3-kilometre-wide stretch of land along the border and building a 186-kilometre-long border wall, complete with electronic surveillance. It also ordered the authorities to conduct routine pushbacks of migrants under a government ordinance updated in the summer of 2021, which has never been annulled despite several courts finding that the pushback tactics used on the Polish-Belarusian border are illegal.

With the migration crisis on this border dropping out of the headlines, many have the impression today that the route is largely inactive. However, as BIRN witnessed during a visit to the border area in September, this couldn’t be further from the truth.

The three major activist groups offering humanitarian aid on this border – the Podlasie Volunteer Humanitarian Emergency Service (POPH), Grupa Granica and Ocalenie Foundation – say they have provided help to groups of migrants pretty much around the clock during September, with an average of three to four “interventions” daily for each of them (during an “intervention”, activists give food, medicines and legal advice to migrants, from lone individuals to groups as large as 20).

According to official data from the Polish Border Guard, there were between 100 and 150 attempted entries every day during this period, which adds up to a monthly figure larger than back in August 2021 when this border situation was all over the news.

More of the same

Many human rights activists had hoped that the new liberal-democratic government of Donald Tusk would put an end to what they argue are illegal pushbacks on this border. Yet what has actually happened since the general election in late 2023 is essentially a continuation of the policies initiated by PiS in the years since the crisis began, activists say.

On the plus side, the Polish Border Guard has, under instruction from the new government, established “search and rescue” units to provide first aid to migrants in distress. Within the space of one week, BIRN witnessed several instances where migrants expressing a desire to apply for asylum in Poland were taken to the border guard station to initiate the procedure. The Border Guard told BIRN they now ask each migrant they catch whether they want to apply for asylum in Poland or not.

However, BIRN also published video evidence of the Border Guard earlier this year pushing back across the border unconscious migrants who clearly were not able to express an intention to apply for protection. Activists on the ground claim these border pushbacks remain the routine response of the Polish authorities to attempted illegal entries.

Interestingly, during BIRN’s recent visit to the border wall, border guards freely admitted in front of journalists that they “turn back” migrants to Belarus using built-in gates in the metal fence, which Polish officials previously claimed were meant for animals to roam across the border or for border guards to perform administrative tasks such as cleaning.

According to data provided to BIRN by the Border Guard, migrants made over 15,000 attempts to enter Poland from Belarus this year. During the same period, Poland accepted 1,900 asylum applications, with the implication being that the difference in numbers is down to the pushbacks. To put that in context, Germany accepted 124,000 asylum applications in the first half of this year.

Just a Minuteman

While the governmental line on the border situation might be largely unchanged, the general attitude of Poles towards the migrants and activists who help them has arguably worsened since Tusk’s government took power in December 2023.

“Poland is a very polarized country so, before, under the Law and Justice government, the democrats who opposed the illiberal government were also against its policies on the Polish-Belarus border and, therefore, mostly in favour of the refugees and supportive of our activities,” Agata Kluczewska from the POPH activist group tells BIRN.

“But this is no longer the case since the new government came to power,” she explains. “Not only does the Tusk government pursue the same line as PiS on pushbacks, but they also use the same language, referring to migrants as terrorists and to us, the activists, as harmful. So, their voters trust them on this.”

“We feel completely alone now and have no hope whatsoever that the situation will improve,” Kluczewska concluded.

A physical manifestation of the negative atmosphere Kluczewska describes is the increase over the last months in the number of ‘patriotic’ civilian groupswho organise patrols on the border to detain migrants that they come across in the forests.

“When we find migrants, we apprehend them and then inform the Border Guard about their location,” Piotr from the Hajnowka Rifle Unit Association tells BIRN in an interview.

“Our firm voices and posture generate respect,” he says in explanation of why the migrants accept being detained by civilians like him on patrol.

As visible in the online videos these groups post on their social media channels, the patrolling men wear military-style clothes, are well built and carry sophisticated gear such as night-vision binoculars. For migrants coming from another continent, they could easily pass for members of the regular army, something which Piotr acknowledges.

The Border Guard has declared they do not need the help of these “citizen patrols” and that they have no contact with them. Yet despite the official statements, members of the patrols say the border guards do sometimes ask for their help. “If they know we are in the area, it has happened that the border guards have asked for our help to locate migrants,” Piotr says, adding that the patrols are very careful “not to interfere with the competencies of the authorities”.

He adds that the men on patrol do their best to keep their physical distance from both the migrants and the activists trying to help them.

So far, no major incidents of violence between the patrols and the migrants have been reported. But with the number of these patrols on the rise, new volunteers coming from as far away as Warsaw to take part in them and the number of attempted illegal crossings also high, the risk of a direct confrontation is surely mounting.