It started with the dogs biting us and having us on the ground – Aden’s pushback

Aden’s pushback: Aden crossed the border on December 22, 2024 during the evening, around 9 p.m. As he describes, at that time he was traveling in a group of eleven adult people from Somalia. The group included one woman. While crossing the border through the barrier, one member of the group suffered a serious injury:

When we were crossing the border, I would like to mention that we used makeshift stairs or ladder made of wood that we made ourselves, and we climbed to the top. […] one guy that was with us just jumped from the top to the bottom and his legs snapped in half, his bone was sticking out of his foot.

Aden recalls that the officers who found the injured man shortly afterwards did not give him medical attention, but only transported him to the other side of the border wall:

And I would like to mention that the Polish border guards were merciless, as they took this guy and just opened the door and pushed him out with this injury without giving any care.

Meanwhile, the rest of Aden’s group ran ahead, moving away from the barrier. Aden knows what happened to his traveling companion right after he fell from the wall because he was pushed back to Belarus a few hours later through the same gate, along with the rest of the group.

[…] this one guy among us was injured, this was his first time crossing and he just jumped over, the place is high so he broke his leg. They put him outside via this door and we had gone in, but once they rounded us up, they kind of pushed us through the same door so that we would be able to assist the one guy.

As reported in the testimony, after crossing the barrier, Aden and the others ran off about 2 kilometers farther into Polish territory. The group contacted a humanitarian aid organization and waited for the arrival of the aid team for over seven hours. Before the humanitarian assistance arrived, Aden’s group was caught by four masked officers, dressed in green uniforms. The officers were accompanied by dogs.

There were four soldiers with masks who caught us. […] They said “Stop, stop!”, but even before the guards came to us, what came faster was the dogs, and they let them loose, and the dogs were the ones that bit us and had us on the floor, rolling on the floor, and when the officers came to where we were, they just started hitting us and beating us, thereafter is when they handcuffed us and took us to the border to be thrown back.

One of the people from Aden’s group ran in another direction and avoided contact with officers. To Aden’s knowledge, the man is currently in a center for foreigners in Poland.

The eleventh guy had run a separate way and he wasn’t with us anymore and they asked us: “Is this just you?” and we said “Yes, this is our whole group”. 

Aden describes that officers brutally beat, kicked and trampled him and the rest of his group from the very first moments of contact. He emphasises that he still suffers consequences to his health from the violence he experienced from the forces at that time.

It started with the dogs biting us and having us on the ground and kind of struggling with us. And after came the officers, they made us lay on our chests to the ground and they started stomping on our backs and kicking us for a while. Afterwards, they raised us and they started punching us on the face, on the head. And one of them hit me with a boot to the side of my jaw. Currently, I cannot pass my jaw past a certain few centimetres. Just opening my mouth wide is difficult.

As reported, all the persons caught by the officers were beaten.

Among us that were caught, they beat all of us. They did not leave the girl who was with us. 

Officers also used pepper spray on Aden and the rest of the group, as well as they seized and broke their phones. Aden stresses that he and his companions were carrying almost nothing at the time of their apprehension. They lacked food and, in the case of some people in the group, clothing as well.

They searched us and they took our phones and broke them. […] we did not have much of ourselves, even the food that we had, we had already used up the last bit. One of the boys didn’t even have shoes because his shoes got stuck when he was crossing the border and they did not even give him any shoes and it was very cold. His legs darkened and he has some sort of problems with his foot now. Right now they are suggesting that his foot be cut off as when they were being thrown outside they were thrown into cold water.

Aden and the other people who were stopped were then transported to the border barrier in two camo green cars, with sirens on the roofs and writing on the sides. The ride lasted about 15 minutes. The officers then beat the individuals in Aden’s group again, and before doing so cuffed them using plastic zip ties.

When they took us to the border in the vehicles, they took us out, they handcuffed us and this is when they beat us, this is between the main border wall and the second one, the smaller net, between there is this sort of [inaudible] and this is where they put us on the floor and beat us. And after that they pushed us outside the border.

[…]

When they were beating us, this was when we were handcuffed. But I would like to mention, this is not the metallic one for the officers. It’s more like the plastic one. And when they were throwing us from the border, this is when they cut them off. 

Aden recalls that when he and the others were forced by officers to cross the barrier, it was snowing. It was the morning of the next day after the group crossed the Polish border, Aden estimates it was around 8 or 9 a.m. on December 23rd, 2024.

It was snowing and it was quite cold, I would say about negative seven degrees. […] when they were pushing us to the border they opened the door for us and pushed us into a sort of a pool of water and this pool of water was approximately to the chest and it was extremely cold and it was very, very scary.

After crossing to the other side of the barrier, the group was near border post 420 – in a swampy area, east of Zalew Siemianówka. Soon after finding themselves on the eastern side of the border wall, Aden and his companions had contact with Belarusian forces, from whom they experienced further violence, including being forced several times to cross the Lithuanian border.

When we were on the other side and when we got to the Belarusian border and we made contact with some sort of barrier, when we made contact with this there was an alarm and officers came. And they also beat us, after a while they threw us in a vehicle and took us somewhere where they said it was Lithuanian border and there was a river in between. They asked us to cross this river. We waited for them to leave, as soon as they left we tried to back track and walk back into Belarus, after walking for about six kilometers, there were two officers waiting for us there from Belarus, they pushed us back to where we started walking from and they asked us to get back into Lithuania. We crossed the river and as soon as we entered it was extremely cold. When we were on the other side the Lithuanian officers caught us and they also told us “Go back to Belarus”, so we crossed the border… This whole process of these events even happening took us about three days. And this time when we were just walking we didn’t have phones as they were broken when we were on the Polish side. We started following the tire tracks that we saw and we were just hoping that they lead somewhere.

Aden and his companions managed to reach a Belarusian town thanks to the group of migrants they met by chance while walking along the border. When asked what else he wants to mention, Aden notes that he suffered damage to his health as a result of the officer’s aggression and exposure to the cold he experienced in Poland.

Yes, what I can add is that my injuries, I would like to describe them. I would like to mention that my jaw as well as my back teeth are injured, this is from the beating I received and my hands and feet are not okay and this from the cold I experienced walking [inaudible] during the winter.

Aden also mentioned that he had experienced one or more pushbacks from Poland before. In the past, he was caught by the forces during an intervention of a humanitarian organization. Aden describes that he did not expect officers to use violence against migrants in the presence of witnesses and neither that they would prevent them from providing humanitarian assistance.

In one of his previous trips the officers caught them while the foundation was there and the foundation wasn’t even able to help them, they were beaten with the foundation members present and this was very shocking for him and he was asking how is this possible? And also he previously thought that humanitarian help will be able to be offered by foundation members but he found out that with police officers present while foundation members were there no assistance could be offered.