They asked me to lie down and not to look at them – Vahid’s pushback

Vahid¹ The respondent’s name has been changed. comes from Iran. He spent 4 months in the forest in the Polish-Belarusian border area between April and August 2024. During this time he experienced four pushbacks. In his testimony he describes a pushback that happened in July 2024. At that time Vahid crossed the border in a group of 15 people from Iran and Afghanistan. There were 2 women in this group. One of them was pregnant and the other one was travelling with her son who was about 11 years old. The rest of the members of the group were adult men. The group crossed the border at around 12PM. Vahid says that he separated from the group when they saw border guards. He was the first one who was caught. It happened at around 2PM after he had walked for about 10 kilometres. From what Vahid knows the rest of the people whom he had crossed the border with separated into a 6-person and an 8-person group:

We crossed the border at 12 in the afternoon. After that, at 2 o’clock they caught me first, and after that at 8 o’clock they caught also these 6 people who were in this group.[…] When the border guards try to get us. […] I sacrificed myself for the rest of the group, and when I just changed my way and went alone, all the border guards were after me and they left the other group. So I sacrificed myself for the others. […] It was around 10 km that I walked […] I was close to a highway, and this group of 6 people, they were already on the highway and they even got in the car and they were even… went like around 100 km. But still, the border guard caught them there.

Vahid was caught and beaten by three border guards. One of the things that they used to beat him was a gun. The men in uniforms also used pepper spray on him. They searched Vahid’s backpack and took the money that they found there. After that a few other border guards arrived. They drove Vahid to the border wall. They broke his phone during the pushback.

They were 3, and were after me and when they caught me.. all of them start beating me.

[…]

They kicked for one hour and after that they just pushed me back from this border wall. […] They used the spray, and also they took my phone, and just broke my phone. And also they were hitting with part of the gun. […] They transport me with a car […] they left us²It is unclear why Vahid changes the number from singular to plural when describing the moment of the pushback. He does not mention that anyone other than the officers was present in the situation. about 20 km far from this place where they caught us, like.. and then they pushed us through this doors in this wall […] The border guards who caught first, they mostly checked our backpacks, and in our backpacks they… they steal our phone and break it there and even sometimes we had money in our backpack and they stole it […] they didn’t take [passports].

Vahid supposes that the pushback took place near the borderpost number 385³ In the Bialowieza Forest, near Hwozna River.. However, due to the fact that he had experienced four pushbacks, he is not able to recall with certainty the exact location where each one of them took place. He points out that despite the fact that he doesn’t speak English well, he asked the border guards for asylum in English. The border guards rejected his request.

Because I don’t understand English, it was hard for me to ask for this asylum part. But still I asked them but they didn’t accept it. […] They just said that no, we can’t do that, we cannot.

Vahid doesn’t remember what exactly the officers looked like, because they told him not to look in their direction. However he had identified them as border guards by their uniforms. According to Vahid’s account, the three officers who caught him had military uniforms on. The ones who came later in a car were dressed differently.

It was the clothes of border guards […] I didn’t see [what was written on it], I don’t remember. But even they don’t allow me like to just look at them. They asked me to lie down and not to look at them so I don’t remember. […] People who caught us, they had this soldiers uniforms, and the people who came with the car, they had mostly a green t-shirt on them with a kind of band.

Vahid describes what happened to the people whom he had crossed the border with after he had separated from them. The 8-person group was caught and pushed back one day after Vahid. The 6-person group was caught the next day in a car several kilometers from the border:

About pushback, it was different, like each of us like with the group […] Like there was difference about one day, first they caught me and then they caught the 8 people, and they pushed them next day, and then they caught these 6 people and they pushed them back like the next day. So it was one day difference between each.

In the 6-person group there was a pregnant woman who miscarried. She was transported to the hospital. Border guards pushed her back from the hospital to Belarus:

I know them, I knew this lady with her husband from when we were in Belarus, and they even once got to a car after they crossed this border to Poland, so they even got to the car and they were far about 50 up to 60 kilometres from this border, but the border guards caught them there. And the couple asked a lot about help, that they want to stay, they need help because the lady [was] pregnant, but they didn’t listen to that. And during this miscarriage they transport her.. like they sent her to a hospital and she got miscarriage there, and after this hospital, they pushed back her so she is in the forest still.

Vahid is still in contact with the woman who had experienced the miscarriage. He points out that she is in an especially difficult situation, because she cannot return to her country of origin:

Yes, I’m in contact with this lady still […] she is in Belarus. […] she can’t come back to Iran, she can’t live with her husband in Iran so she need to go to Britain and she has to cross this border .. she doesn’t have any other way so she need to take a risk and try to cross this border again and again.

Vahid thinks that destroying phones by border guards is an especially cruel practice, because, as he says, a phone is necessary to find one’s way in the forest:

The worst part is that they took our phone and broke our phone, and for a refugee in the forest like it’s the thing that is mostly needed is the phone. So without a phone they even can’t find their way. 

Vahid says that pushbacks were a difficult experience for him because of the violence he experienced himself and the violence towards women and children that he witnessed:

And this push backs weren’t easy for me, they used violence and then used some kind of spray on our eyes, and they were really cruel to us and they even beat us. […] wasn’t kind to pregnant women, or kids… so it was really hard experience for me.