The problem is, they are not legal. There is no legality about it. Everything is just force – Kiros’s four pushbacks

At the moment of the interview (January 2025) Kiros, who comes from Ethiopia, has reported that he has experienced 4 pushbacks from Poland to Belarus in the span of two months and three weeks. The last of them, described below, took place in November of 2024.

The group Kiros traveled with consisted of him, one other man, and two women. They crossed the Polish border barrier together, around midnight. Kiros says that one of the women has sprained both of her ankles while crossing the wall.

The group spent around 5 to 6 hours in the forest before being caught by the Polish forces. Kiros thinks it likely that they’ve been found with the use of drones. The intervention was conducted by three men and a woman. According to Kiros, the group was attacked and beaten up by the officers immediately after being caught.

They have a drone, the surveillance is quite strong and it’s a tight border so they will come and look for you and when they actually catch you, they will beat you up, or they’ll scare you, you know. I don’t know, it’s because they’re scared themselves.

In our case it’s like they use a drone to catch us and when they caught us, they didn’t say that ‘you are under arrest’ or nothing. They just come and beat us up and then they will put handcuffs on you.

Kiros reports that after they were all beaten up, the officers restrained them with plastic handcuffs and frisked them. During the search that took place in the car, officers destroyed the phones belonging to the people in the group and tore up their money.

When they catch you, they will break your phone and they don’t really take your money, but they’ll tear your money in front of you, they’ll just tear the bills, the dollars or whatever you have.

[…]

They’ll search you, and they’ll search you as a suspect, and they’ll search you for everything, for documents, for everything that you have on you. And the males search the males and the females search the females, and because at that time it was midnight, they couldn’t take us back to the station, so they searched us in the car.

People from Kiros’ group have tried to talk to the officers and ask for medical help for the woman, however their pleas have been ignored:

We tried to speak to them and we even showed the girl, her ankle was dislocated and she had an injury and we tried to reason with them, but they’re not the kind of people who’d reason with you. We said we’re immigrants, we’re here for a better life and everything, so they won’t listen.

According to Kiros, the border guards have not given them any documents to sign, nor have they explained the groups’ legal situation.

No, there was nothing, there were no papers or anything like that. They don’t care about you. What they will do is they will catch you, they’ll break your phone and do whatever they have to do, beat you, use any force necessary, and then they’ll put you back. If there was a process in which, okay, you’ll go through here legally, let’s make you legal or let’s sign some papers or anything. This would have been okay. This would have been perfect, but that’s not the case. […] there was no law or nothing. 

The officers have also ignored the requests for international protection. Kiros mentions that when he asked for international protection, he was just insulted.

They all say ‘kurwa’, so they use the word ‘kurwa’ and I don’t know why […] they say, ‘you want to go to Germany and you don’t want our country’. So because they have that kind of feeling, they have this hate for refugees and immigrants.

The group has been transported to the border wall by a minivan, described by Kiros as a typical car for prisoner transportation. The drive took between 45 minutes and an hour. They were pushed back around the border post no 419 – a swampy region east of Siemianówka reservoir. During the pushback, one of the officers opened a gate in the border wall and cut the plastic handcuffs restraining them. Another officer was threatening Kiros and his companions with the use of pepper spray in order to force them to cross to the other side of the wall.

There were two of them. […] one opened the gate and when he opened the gate, he’ll cut that plastic handcuff from our hands and then he’ll say ‘get in the water!’ and he will force you to get in the water. If you don’t get in the water, they will use a pepper spray on him and if they use the pepper spray, you can’t see anything for hours because of the pepper spray and it’s so painful for your eyes. So even for us in our situation, they told us to get in and we were forced so we got in because we didn’t want to be sprayed.

Kiros says that the place they’ve been pushed to was very wet and marshy. The group spent at least half a day trying to get to a dry land.

It’s like a waterfall of algae and a lot of pests inside it. And then you’re forced to get in there, and then they’ll just get you in there. And then it takes us half a day, all day, to get out of that water, and you just lose everything at this moment.

Next, Kiros described another pushback, this time without providing the location or date. After crossing the border, he was trying to contact a humanitarian organization, which was not possible due to the lack of signal. He arrived at the city, and was stopped by the police there. The officers who apprehended him and his companions mocked them and called them monkeys.

We tried to call the humanitarians, but data roaming was not working on our phones, so we walked for miles […] and then we went there and we thought that time, even if the police caught us, they would help us, because they are in the city. But they called us monkeys, that’s what they called us, they called us monkeys and they lied. […] they make us call ourselves monkeys and they say something, say this in Polish, i don’t know what they were saying, but they make us call us monkeys. 

[…]

Yeah, at first the police caught me, […] then the police called the border guards and the border guards came and put those plastic handcuffs on my hands. And I was like for like an hour and a half at the border guard station and from the border guard station they pushed me back.

Kiros describes the actions of Polish forces as illegal. He emphasises that he wanted to legalize his stay in Poland.

The problem is, they are not legal. There is no legality about it. Everything is just force. They will just come, they beat you, torture you, insult you and then push you back. If there was like a process that even if you can sign some paper and then go back, you can say there is some legality to it. But there is no legality or no nothing to it. They just come and at that time, when my last pushback was at the border, they pushed me back and that’s all. But here I go to the police, the police were called, I tried to be legal, I tried to make everything right. But they come, they do this […] and send us to the border guard. From the border guards, we were beaten and sent back to Belarus.

After the pushback described above, Kiros has experienced violence from the Belarusian forces and has been forced to try to cross the border again, even though his hand was broken.

When the Belarus car patrol saw me, they came to me and beat me up and then broke my arm and they even brought a dog. And the dog was terrible, very tough to talk about. […] Later at night, after midnight, they forced me, despite my hand being broken, they forced me to go back to try to go back to Poland.

Kiros has also described how the experience of violence during the pushbacks and while in Belarus affects people on the move. He mentioned three people who have died at the Polish-Belarusian borderland.

I just want to forget about this stuff, the pain. I know I’m just lucky that I just went pass this within two months time. But I know people who stayed here for six months, you know, I know one girl who suffered for one year and a half, one year and four months. It’s crazy. […] in the border and in the city in Belarus, if you’re illegal, they’ll put you in this closed camp, all hell will break loose there. And I know people who forgot the days, who forgot a lot of things, because of the situation there and what has happened to the migrants. […] And I know three people who died, one Somalian, one Ethiopian and one that I don’t know the nationality of.

Kiros wants the people responsible for the violation of human rights at the border to be held accountable.

They’re like savages, if I’m being honest. And if there’s any legal measure that could be taken against them, I really wish that […]. Or if a legal measure is not possible, I will be very glad if there’s some kind of awareness, if there’s some kind of awareness being created about this, for the people.