April 16, Pozirk. Polish border guards discovered two dead bodies in the Bug River near Janów Podlaski after rounding up 13 Afghan nationals who crossed from Belarus into Poland irregularly, bp24.pl said yesterday.
One of the deceased reportedly had drowned long time ago.
Five bodies have been found at the Polish-Belarusian border over the past two weeks: two in Belarus and three on the Polish side, according to Gazeta Wyborcza.
At least 66 foreigners have lost their lives on both sides of the border since 2021, the report said, noting that Alaksandar Łukašenka’s facilitation of illegal migration via Belarus trapped people fleeing wars, persecution, extreme poverty and violence.
Earlier this month, Belarusian border guards found a dead foreigner some 10 meters from the Latvian fence in the Viciebsk region’s Vierchniadźvinsk district.
Belarusian officials always blame their western counterparts for pushbacks and suffering endured by third-country nationals seeking to cross the border into the EU from Belarus, yet the recent report by the Oxfam and Egala human rights groups said foreigners face violence on both sides of the border.
In Belarus, people are at times detained in camps or forced to create makeshift camps in the forest.
“The policy of pushbacks, together with extensive border fortifications on the Polish side – including a five-m-high border fence topped with razor wire – can trap people in the border area, an area known as the Sistema or ‘death zone,’ for days, weeks or even months,” the report stressed.
Human rights defenders documented the death of 116 migrants at the Belarusian-European border between August 2021 and March 2024, the Belarusian human rights organization Human Constanta, Latvia’s Gribu palīdzēt bēgļiem and Poland’s Ocalenie Foundation said.
The migration crisis at the Belarusian-EU border has been ongoing since spring 2021 after Łukašenka, angered by EU sanctions, had indicated that Minsk would not prevent people from Africa and Asia from traveling through Belarus to the EU.
Belarus’ western neighbors call the crisis a “hybrid attack” orchestrated by Minsk and Moscow.
