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Near the village of Froncki, 10 kilometers from the border with Belarus, border guards found three Iraqis frozen in the forest and called an ambulance.
Doctors discovered that one man was already dead and the other two were rushed to Suwalki Hospital.
It is speculated that these Iraqis may have entered the territory of Poland not from Belarus, but from Lithuania.
Soon doctors had to go to the Pionkai settlement along with rescuers, where eight other refugees were found trapped in the swamps.
After a few hours of surgery, three women and five men were able to be pulled out of the mud and taken to the hospital.
Border guards also arrested a Georgian and an Uzbek citizen, who were allegedly taken to transport refugees to Poland for a reward. Detainees will be tried.
On Sunday, the Polish border service said it had found three more bodies of frozen refugees, but did not release more detailed information.
Blame each other
For its part, Minsk denounced the death of a 39-year-old Iraqi woman and accused the Polish border guards of taking the body to Belarusian territory. This is evidenced not only by the signs of stretching seen in the grass, but also by the fact that the woman was without a single shoe that was allegedly lost when pulling on it.
Although the Polish border guards denied the allegations, the refugee deaths lifted the Polish government from cancer; no minister commented on the events over the weekend.
Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki mourned the deaths on Monday, saying he was “dealing with a well-organized campaign in Minsk and Moscow.”
According to the prime minister, the Polish government is trying to “help and save lives where possible” but added that the planned “Polish border storm” by Minsk is underway.
Border guards prevented a record number of 324 refugees from entering Poland last Saturday.
There were 242 such attempts on Friday and so far, more than 3,800 illegal people have been blocked in September.
In several places, migrants are reported to be able to break through a newly built barbed wire fence and run into Polish territory.
The media supporting the government claim that, in principle, the government should not allow anything, otherwise tens of thousands of refugees will flock to Poland.
The cold does its thing
With the imposition of the state of emergency on the border with Belarus on September 2, little information about the refugee situation is made public.
Journalists or representatives of humanitarian organizations are not allowed into the area.
“We have said aloud that it will not be possible to endure in such conditions, so the government cannot justify the ignorance of the critical condition of the refugees and affirm that it is not to blame for the deaths that have begun,” said Mariana Wartecka . a spokeswoman for the humanitarian organization Ocalenie.
Ocalenie provided food and clothing to refugees concentrated on the Belarusian-Polish border and warned of impending deaths in cold weather. In addition, some refugees are sick and do not receive medical assistance.
The humanitarian organization claims that some of the refugees are really running out of repression, are poor and starving at the border while trying to break into Poland.
There is little criticism
A few months ago, the opposition also harshly criticized the Polish government for its inhumane treatment of refugees and its decision to build a fence on the border.
Later, the widespread opinion of politicians prevailed that this was the only way to resist the hybrid war between Minsk and Moscow.
Now only isolated leftist politicians and humanitarian organizations continue to call for the admission of refugees.
The ruling Catholic Law and Justice parties also do not criticize the Church for the refugee crisis.
Even the famous blogger nun Malgorzata Chmielewska admits: “Refugees living on the border are a political problem because wars are always caused by politicians.”
Migrants are on the rise
In the European Union, Norway and Switzerland, around 45,000 applications were submitted in July. applications for asylum, mainly since the start of the coronavirus crisis. Of these, 2,200 are unaccompanied minors, including 1,200 Afghans.
According to the European Asylum Support Office (EASO), some 40,600 people applied for protection status in June.
The majority of requests (around 8,500) continue to come from Syrian nationals, but as of December 2020, the gap between arrivals from this country and Afghanistan is narrowing rapidly.
Fewer applications came in from some countries in North and West Africa.
