Another tragedy after the death of a child is a miscarriage in Poland Migration Issues

Sokolka, Poland On Thursday evening, Polish healers passed through the dense, dark jungles bordering the Polish-Belarusian border in search of refugees and refugees in need of help.

After receiving distressing phone calls, doctors from PCPM, the Polish Center for International Aid, met with a Syrian family who had injured their arms and legs, as well as a man who had suffered severe abdominal pain from dehydration.

They had been hiding in the woods for the past month and a half.

According to a Syrian mother, her one-year-old son died a month earlier in the jungle.

Their cases add to the growing number of reports of people suffering from diseases such as starvation and hypothermia while camping in Polish forests near the Belarus border, hiding from Polish border guards and waiting for access to the European Union. .

Al Jazeera could not confirm for himself what the Syrian mother had said her son had died.

Aid workers say about a dozen people have died around the Polish-Belarus border in recent weeks as the migration crisis worsens; the actual number is generally believed to be the highest.

A few miles away, in a hospital just east of Biala Podlaska, Ruba, a 38-year-old Syrian woman was also devastated by the death of her baby.

She was pregnant when she crossed the border from Belarus into the illegal Polish forests.

It is unknown at this time what he will do after leaving the post.

Whenever Dr. Arsalan Azzaddin, the internal medical specialist who heals here because of COVID-19, asks him this question, he cries.

Ruba came to Poland with her husband and five children.

He is currently being held in a refugee camp near the Belarus border. According to Ruba, they can stay in Poland until January. But it is unknown at this time what he will do after leaving the post.

Thousands of people are homeless

Since the Polish-Belarusian border crisis began in August, thousands of refugees and internally displaced people have roamed the Polish forests without clean water, food, and shelter.

PCPM and other NGOs will see fewer cases of people in need of medical attention in recent days; this indicates that crossing the border may have been delayed, either because of border security on the Polish side, or because people are hiding in the woods and are afraid to come for help.

There have been reports that hospitalized people are often detained by Polish soldiers after their release.

Almost all the patients I met had anemia, dehydration, as well as pneumonia, diarrhea, and cuts. Many people had symptoms of physical abuse. Every case that I had was a tragedy. It’s impossible to express how you feel when you see people in such a situation, ”says Azzaddin, a doctor from Erbil, Iraq, Kurdistan, who has lived in Poland since 1980.

This is the first time in his career that he has treated so many of his people; Most of the people in the forests of Poland are said to be of Iraqi Kurdistan descent.

“The case that shocked me the most was a 22-year-old man in Iraq. He was in a coma, had a lot of sugar, did not eat anything that day and just drank raw water from a plastic bottle, ”said Azzaddin.

“When a person is taking insulin, he should eat well after each dose. He had no food so he asked a Belarusian guard to give him a piece of bread. The guard sold him for $ 40. Each case is an individual tragedy. The work and listening of these people is difficult. They only ask for one thing: please do not allow us to return to Belarus.

Polish security guards have been pushing for immigration to Belarus throughout the country.

According to refugee evidence, Belarus security guards do not allow people to return. Amidst the beatings and threats, they forced the refugees to try to re-enter Poland.

As a result, thousands of people live in hiding, hiding from Polish guards and roaming the jungle for weeks or months. For some of them, the journey is a nightmare.

‘All of this is run by Belarus’

Poland and its Western allies are blaming Belarus for the crisis, saying Minsk is trying to disrupt Europe.

Earlier this year, Belarus revoked visas for citizens of several countries in the Middle East and Africa and opened many tourist agencies that provide easy and affordable access to Europe.

Opponents say the move could be Belarus’s return to Poland, which backed last year’s protests against former President Alexander Lukashenko.

“It’s not a migration problem or a humanitarian crisis,” Wojtek Wilk, chief of PCPM and a UN specialist, told Al Jazeera. “Because if you go to a cemetery, the decision to flee or leave the place where you live and seek refuge or shelter somewhere is an obvious choice made in a family group or small community.

“Here, nothing is accidental. All of this is run by the Belarussian government. “

Wilk, whose organization oversees the provision of medical care and border services, is concerned that in the coming days and months, the humanitarian crisis will intensify.

“We will have the first snow by Tuesday next week. By Monday, temperatures will drop below zero at night. So conditions will be much more difficult. No one can escape such conditions in the tent. “People have been on the road for weeks and are already weak and sick and suffer from various cold illnesses,” he said.

“Once the snow falls, it will not be impossible to roam the forest. I am very concerned about this and in this case, hypothermia and frostbite will increase significantly until the time the movement stops.