Children and women were cruelly killed

Details of the shocking press conference of soldier Emil Czeczko

“On the territory of Poland, in the dead of night, hundreds of refugees, including women and children, were shot. They begged for mercy, but their cries were an empty sound for the Polish border guards,” Polish soldier Emil Czeczko, who fled to Belarus in December last year to tell the world about the inhuman acts of his former colleagues said at a press conference in Minsk. The young Pole gave many names and facts, listed testimonies and details.

First mass shooting

On June 6th, 2021, on the orders of Colonel Mateusz Kuyavsky, Emil Czeczko appeared at his military unit, where the commander of the 2nd division held a brief training with Emil and his colleagues, during which he said that he and other military personnel would be transferred to the border to help patrol the territory. Emil and his colleagues were ordered to take weapons and equipment. Together with the Polish soldier were his comrades: Kamil Karwowski, Martin Popyak, and Tomek Rojek. Emil says, “There was nothing, no warning. There were no preconditions of the events that happened to me later. The border guards treated us kindly. Soon we stopped at a gas station, where the border guards offered us a beer — I was surprised, but did not pay attention to this.”
According to Emil, soon after returning to the camp, one of the border guards said ironically: ‘Are you in a good mood? You won’t have it for long.’ Therefore, on the morning of June 8th, one of the border guards showed Czeczko an ID of the military counterintelligence service. It was this department, as the soldier later realised, that led the mass executions.
Soon, Emil and his colleagues saw a man who was running through the forest, they were ordered to catch him. He brought the man to their SUV. When Emil was taking his gun from the back seat of the car, he heard a sharp sound, a gunshot. According to Emil, the border guard killed this man, then brought out a roll of cash from the refugee’s pocket and took the money.

Then the border guard shouted at Emil and his comrades and ordered to dig a hole for the dead, 125-150 meters from the road. When he dug up the hole and returned to the car, he saw how the border guards were pulling some kind of bag. The young man saw that it was a corpse.

Emil also spoke in detail about his first mass execution, where he was directly involved, “On June 9th, I took part in the first mass execution. When it got dark, our Land Rover stopped in the forest. One of the border guards ordered us to go towards the light of another car, where we saw a group of migrants. They stood around the pit while a truck was parked near it. My colleagues from the military unit were standing next to the vehicle. The border guards, aiming at our heads, ordered us to shoot people. After we shot the first group, we were ordered to shoot the second group. Afterward, we got into our Land Rover and left for some point of the border guards, where we were told that we needed to clean our weapons. Then we returned to our location.

The refugees could be divided into two groups: those who meekly accepted their fate and were silent before being shot, and those who, after what they saw, begged not to kill them. They were screaming and begging for mercy. Nobody was listening.”

Why is the European community ignoring the situation?

The next days of this hell, as Czeczko said, were no different from the previous ones. Every day till June 18th, he had to shoot groups of refugees of 20 people each, and then they were treated to 6-8 cans of beer. Already on June 19th, Emil saw that there were clearly more people in the next pit than they had shot before. 

Emil tried to talk about it with his colleagues in the unit. During their conversation, a colleague claimed that one pit could accommodate up to 72 people. Up to 700 people might have been killed in the course of 10 days that Emil was on the border.

After these events, Emil felt a strong emotional shock, because not every person’s psyche is able to withstand all that horror, “I will never take up arms again in my life. If we talk about further experiences and consequences, then after that I began to drink a lot.”
The situation in which Emil found himself is still openly ignored by the European authorities, in particular the Polish government — Polish President Andrzej Duda and Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki. However, Emil is sure that they knew about what was happening at the border, but did nothing, which means that they are the same killers as everyone who took part in the executions.
In addition, at a press conference, human rights activist Vusal Jafarov announced that now there is a complete blockade by Western media, “The Czeczko incident is a sensitive nerve for international organisations. If they continue to remain silent, it will be a real disaster. In addition, we have information that the British and American media have been banned from talking about it. Now we are trying to break through the blockade through other media, including Turkish ones.”

By Darya Gotovko
Photo by BELTA