HAJNOWKA — A criminal trial begins Tuesday in this town in eastern Poland that says a lot about how much of the world views migration today. The alleged crime of the five Polish defendants: providing humanitarian aid to refugees, including families with children.
“Our case is an element of a broader policy aimed at deterring those who decide to fight for a decent life through migration and those who try to help them,” says one of the accused.
For the latest news & views from every corner of the world, Worldcrunch Today is the only truly international newsletter. Sign up here.
The five defendants face up to five years in prison for providing humanitarian aid on the Polish-Belarusian border, with the trial beginning in the District Court in Hajnówka. According to the local prosecutor’s office, their crime was that of providing refugees with food, clothing and transport into the country. In reality, the volunteers drove them not across the border, but from the forest where they were stranded to the nearest town.
Is helping illegal?
Each of the accused individuals has been providing humanitarian aid on the Polish-Belarusian border, where in the summer of 2021 there was a migration crisis — and, simultaneously, a humanitarian one. Some of these volunteers were also operating on the border with Ukraine.
Four of the accused (who permanently reside in different regions of Poland) were providing assistance in the border forest to a nine-person family from Iraq (including seven children) as well as to an Egyptian citizen. This refugee group had been there for many days: without water, food and access to medical assistance, after they had entered Poland through Belarus.
The volunteers were charged with organizing illegal crossings along the border, which carries a penalty of up to eight years in prison.
“This is harassment,” Hanna Machińska, a human rights lawyer, had declared in December at a meeting in the region. “I cannot follow the prosecutor’s reasoning in this case. Helping is not illegal.”
Ordinary reflex
Among the accused is Ewa Natalia Moroz-Keczyńska, an ethnologist and educator who is involved in cultural activities related to the heritage of the Podlasie region, which borders Belarus.
I know the forest so I took soup in a thermos and went, like many other people from here would do.
“I got involved in helping refugees on the Polish-Belarusian border because there was simply a need, a very urgent need. I couldn’t pretend that I didn’t know what was happening, that I didn’t see it,” she recalled. “They were shivering, hungry, often extremely scared people. Many of them are children, elderly, and women. Entire families.”
She calls her actions on the date she was caught: “an ordinary reflex”
“I know the forest, I’m not afraid to walk in it, so I took soup in a thermos and went, like many other people from here would do,” she explained.
It is worth noting that Moroz-Keczyńska’s ancestors were part of the “Bieżeństwo,” a mass evacuation that took place during World War I, often described as forced displacement into the territory of the Russian empire. This is an important experience to those living in the area, passed down in family stories. An estimated 80% of those displaced came from the Podlasie region, where she now lives, and where she was charged for helping those in need today.
“In these stories, apart from wandering, hunger, illness, fear, the uncertainty of tomorrow, there are also tales of people met along the way, those who helped refugees, treated them, fed them, welcomed them into their communities and helped them get back on their feet,” says Moroz-Keczyńska.
For her, helping is a kind of obligation. “This is my story, my family’s story,” she says. “I was raised on such stories. My father was a doctor, from him I was taught that when another person needs help, you help them — this is as clear as day.”
A kind of scapegoat
Moroz-Keczyńska hoped that some systemic solutions to the situation around the border would emerge in time. She emphasizes that she — along with other activists — took on the burden of humanitarian aid in the belief that this was only a temporary situation, and that the government was working on a “humane solution.”
“But nothing of the sort happened. As residents, we were left completely alone with this, this responsibility fell on us,” she says. “When I received the indictment, it was a real shock. We are being prosecuted for taking care of a family with seven children. For many years, everyone here has been talking about democratic values, the need to build a civil society, educating especially young people about a sense of responsibility for the surrounding reality. It turned out that such attitudes are not at all accepted by our governments.”
Another of the accused activists says: “It was hard for me to believe what I was accused of. I didn’t think that I could be punished by the state for giving another person food, drink, clothes and medicine. I will face a court case and maybe even a sentence for helping people, for wanting to take a family with children out of the forest. I have the impression that we are all scapegoats here, while the state services have already spent many billions on supposedly protecting the border, but have not been able to break up the smuggling gangs and have not been able to solve the humanitarian crisis.”
Forest help
Legal assistance to the accused is being provided by the Szpila collective together with the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights. They will argue that “providing humanitarian assistance is not a crime” but a moral obligation – and “deserves praise, not criminal repression.”
EU member states are tightening migration policies.
Although the regulations do not criminalize humanitarian aid provided on the Polish-Belarusian border, there are cases of harassment and criminal charges brought against activists and residents of Podlasie involved in this aid.
Their attorney, Zbigniew Baszuk, puts the case this way: “The court will have to decide whether providing food and clothing to someone staying in the forest, offering instructions in the event of arrest, providing shelter and rest, and transporting parents with seven children at risk of hunger, cold and being pushed beyond the border wall – criminally violates the legal order of the Republic of Poland.”
A European Issue
Activists fear that the verdict of the court may discourage individuals and organizations from getting involved in helping refugees out of fear of legal repression. “This is a warning to the entire society, a signal that providing support to those in need may involve serious legal consequences,” they say.
Aid organizations remind us that the story of the accused five is not the only example of the “criminalization of humanitarian aid in Poland“. Also in March 2022, guards detained a 20-year-old volunteer of the Catholic Intelligentsia Club. They tried to charge her with organizing illegal border crossings. After several months of investigation, the prosecutor’s office dismissed the case.
The case of the accused five also fits into a broader European context: EU member states are tightening migration policies. Organizations and volunteers rescuing refugees in the Mediterranean or on the Eastern European route (Latvia, Lithuania, Poland) are increasingly facing accusations of supporting illegal immigration, espionage or even belonging to criminal organizations.
Cases such as the arrest and prosecution of Ieva Raubiško (Latvia), rescue ship captains Carola Rackete and Pia Klemp (Italy), or the story of Anouki Van Gestel, Myriam Berghe, Zakia and Walid (Belgium) are – according to aid organizations – evidence of the use of the law “to intimidate and discourage those who provide assistance.”
