Posted: 24.03.2023 14:01:00

State Border Committee: photos featuring refugees’ sufferings in Polish forests on show

Activists have organised a photo exhibition – Displacements are Illegal, Assistance is Legal – to show the sufferings of refugees in Polish forests, the State Border Committee reports in its Telegram channel

Photo by State Border Committee

According to the source, volunteers and humanitarian organisations in Poland seek to show the violation of the law and human rights at the Polish border, to demonstrate the consequences of the EU migration policy to the public and to draw the attention of human rights defenders to the suffering and death of refugees.

The photo exhibition presents large-format images reflecting the gloomy atmosphere of the border forest, where exhausted and doomed to torment people are daily being illegally treated.

“The photos show how human rights are violated on the Polish-Belarusian border, how people from countries such as Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan or the Congo are deprived of the right to seek protection, how cruelly they are treated, how children, pregnant women and the disabled are forced to wander in winter, swampy forests,” Janina Ochojska, the organiser of the exhibition, said.

In addition, those who suffered from the actions of the Polish security forces were present at the opening ceremony. “The refugees who managed to stay alive and get help from volunteers recall that the Polish military did not give water, failed to hear pleas for asylum, separated families and took people to the barbed wire in wet clothes," the State Border Committee noted.

A similar photo exhibition – Border between Life and Death – is on show in Belarus, acting as a proof of the violence and lawlessness of the security forces of Poland, Lithuania and Latvia against vulnerable people seeking protection in Europe. The photo exhibition is available in the lobby of the Minsk railway station until March 26th, and will then move to the Minsk National Airport (until April 2nd).