We tried to find him at the closest border guard compound – in vain. As we were on our way to meet him, he just had time to send a short message: he had been arrested. The young man reached out to the activists two days later, to say he wanted to meet them and ask for asylum in Poland. I was left to film the activists leaving bags of food and warm clothes in a hole in the forest, whispering to each other to avoid attracting the attention of the border patrols, and signaling the location to their invisible protégé.Īt that moment, it felt very much like a game of cat and mouse. On our first attempt, a young Afghan man was too scared of being caught by border police to come out of hiding. That meant hours of driving on bumpy forest roads, most often to no avail. Over four days, we went with them as they attempted to find groups that had reached out to them. They are on standby day and night to go and help migrants who send out SOS messages from their phones. We followed Natalia, Alicia and Marianna, activists in Fundacja Ocalenie – the polish word for rescue, or salvation-, a foundation that has long supported asylum seekers.

Many get stranded in the forest, trying to avoid border patrols who have a free rein to push them back to Belarus if they catch them. RELATED: 45 arrested in Europe, Brazil with 'record haul' of cocaine seized Only residents and security forces can get through.ĭay and night, groups of migrants manage to make their way past the barbed wire fence that lines the border, and through the three kilometre wide exclusion zone to what they hope will be their ticket to Europe. Journalists and NGOs are banned from the sealed area. We were at the edge of a no-go zone that runs along Poland’s 418 kilometre long border with Belarus, following Warsaw’s declared state of emergency in September. They politely, but firmly, ask us to reverse and go back to where we came from. The border police are used to seeing journalists like myself and my colleague Magdalena Chodownik turn up. This is what came to my mind when reaching the Krynki checkpoint near the border with Belarus, after a long drive through Poland’s quiet agricultural landscape.

During my years of reporting, crossing police and military checkpoints when in conflict zones and authoritarian states has –sadly- been a familiar sight.īut it is much more awkward when you’re working in the middle of a conflict-free European Union member state.

Barbed wire fence 7 days to die