‘He beat us for three hours’ – the stories of asylum seekers trying to make it into Poland
Outside a detention centre in the Polish city of Bialystok, where we know asylum seekers who crossed the border from Belarus are being held, we meet a local mother and son.
They have arrived as visitors. The mother, who only wants to be known as Zofia, is carrying a bag of clothes. She plans to give them to a woman she met two weeks ago living rough in the woods near her home.
The woman was among five asylum seekers from Kurdistan who’d managed to enter Poland from Belarus. They had been hiding out in the forest between the two nations. And they were desperate, barefoot and starving.
Zofia took them into her home.
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Humanitarian crisis at Belarus border
“What else could I do?” she asks seemingly more to herself than to me. She said she took them in, allowed them to have a bath and gave them dinner. They stayed for three nights.
Zofia said after they rested and regained their strength, they left. They asked her hundreds of times not to call the police. She didn’t.
She said she knew that sooner or later they would get caught.
But she gave them her phone number and the woman she had helped called when she was picked up by the Polish authorities.
Now Zofia is here to see her again, offering compassion to someone in a desperate situation. And she tells me she will continue to visit the woman as she is likely to be in the centre for some time.
Zofia is not alone in Poland in a desire to help some of the thousands attempting, some succeeding, getting into a European Union nation.
Close to the border with Belarus at night, some houses flash green lights as a signal to migrants and asylum seekers that they are welcome.
Aid agencies are doing what they can to assist people who’ve made it to a no man’s land of forest between the two nations, despite the Polish government imposing legal restrictions preventing journalists and humanitarian workers from getting close to the border.
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‘We’re almost dying of cold and hunger’
At a centre in the city, we meet asylum seekers from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and other nations who are being offered help making their claims to stay.
All have been through trauma to get here. Many told us they endured days, sometimes weeks, of being pushed between the border guards of different nations. Many allege they were assaulted by multiple authorities.
We meet 29-year-old Thaer Rezk from Homs in Syria. He tells us an extraordinary story of crossing from Belarus into Poland, being beaten and pushed back, being driven to Lithuania and being pushed back again before a Belarusian guard cut the wire fence to Poland letting Thaer and his friends through.
‘He beat us for three hours’
He tells us that they hid in the freezing forest for days and nights, struggling with the injuries inflicted by the beatings they endured. He said he was assaulted by border guards in every nation he ended up in.
He added: “In Belarus, he (the guard) kick me on my chest. I can’t breathe. He kick my friend in face. His eye is gone. He beat us like this”.
In Lithuania, he said: “The commandos are not good. It’s very hard and very bad. He beat us for three hours. Very bad. Beat us. He put electric shock on my neck, on my foot.”
At the same centre, we meet an Iraqi mother, Haneen, who insists we protect her identity. She is pregnant with her fourth child and fled the violence at home with her young family.
They travelled to Belarus and waited at the border before moving towards Poland, having to survive in the freezing forest for days.
‘Our situation was really, really difficult’
She said: “Our situation was really, really difficult. All we had was a little bit of water left in a bottle and I had to share it amongst my children. Me and my husband wouldn’t drink. So nothing would happen to them, so they wouldn’t die”.
She recalled: “After we crossed the fence in Belarus and we entered Poland, we waded through water – which reached up to here (she gestured to her chest) – after that we walked for hours, drenched and surrounded by animals and I don’t know what.
“We kept walking for three days until we reached an area where the police found us and brought us here.”
She is optimistic that her life and that of her children will now be secure in Poland or another EU nation.
But thousands more share that aspiration and the Polish government is taking a hard line at the border. The hopes of all who head in this direction are unlikely to be met.
Donald Trump’s 25% tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada have come into effect, as has an additional 10% on Chinese products, bringing the total import tax to 20%.
The US president confirmed the tariffs in a speech at the White House – and his announcement sent US and European stocks down sharply.
The tariffs will be felt heavily by US companies which have factories in Canada and Mexico, such as carmakers.
Mr Trump said: “They’re going to have a tariff. So what they have to do is build their car plants, frankly, and other things in the United States, in which case they have no tariffs.”
There’s “no room left” for a deal that would see the tariffs shelved if fentanyl flowing into the US is curbed by its neighbours, he added.
Mexico and Canada face tariffs of 25%, with 10% for Canadian energy, the Trump administration confirmed.
And tariffs on Chinese imports have doubled, raising them from 10% to 20%.
Canada announced it would retaliate immediately, imposing 25% tariffs on US imports worth C$30bn (£16.3bn). It added the tariffs would be extended in 21 days to cover more US goods entering the country if the US did not lift its sanctions against Canada.
China also vowed to retaliate and reiterated its stance that the Trump administration was trying to “shift the blame” and
“bully” Beijing over fentanyl flows.
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Mr Trump’s speech stoked fears of a trade war in North America, prompting a financial market sell-off.
Stock market indexes the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Nasdaq Composite fell by 1.48% and 2.64% respectively on Monday.
The share prices for automobile companies including General Motors, which has significant truck production in Mexico, Automaker and Ford also fell.
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Consumers in the US could see price hikes within days, an expert has said.
Gustavo Flores-Macias, a public policy professor at Cornell University, New York, said “the automobile sector, in particular, is likely to see considerable negative consequences”.
This is due to supply chains that “crisscross the three countries in the manufacturing process” and ” because of the expected increase in the price of vehicles, which can dampen demand,” he added.
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The Trump administration is gearing up to bring in other tariffs in the coming weeks.
On 2 April, reciprocal tariffs will take effect on all countries that impose duties on US products.
He is also considering 25% tariffs on goods from the EU “very soon” after claiming the bloc was created to “screw the United States”.
A truck has collided with a bus in southern Bolivia, killing at least 31 people, according to police – just two days after a deadly crash claimed at least 37 lives.
Officers said the bus rolled some 500m (1,640ft) down a ravine after the collision on Monday, which took place on the highway between Oruro, in the Bolivian Altiplano, and the highland mining city of Potosi.
The driver of the truck has been arrested, while the cause of the accident is under investigation.
Police spokesperson Limbert Choque said men and women were among the dead, and 22 people suffered injuries.
Rescue teams operating at the site of the crash. Pic: Bolivia’s attorney general/Reuters
Bolivia’s President, Luis Arce, expressed condolences for the victims on social media: “This unfortunate event must be investigated to establish responsibilities,” he said in a post on Facebook.
“We send our most sincere condolences to the bereaved families, wishing them the necessary strength to face these difficult times.”
The crash happened between Oruro and Potosi
On Saturday morning, a crash between two buses killed more than three dozen people in the same region.
It happened between Colchani and the city of Uyuni, a major tourist attraction and the world’s largest salt flat.
People stand near the wreckage of one of the two buses involved in a crash on Saturday. Pic: Reuters/Potosi Departmental Command
Coincidentally, one of the buses was heading to Oruro, where one of the most important carnival celebrations in Latin America is currently taking place.
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More than 30 people were also killed after a bus crash on 17 February.
In that crash, police said the driver appeared to have lost control of the vehicle, causing it to drop more than 800m (2,600ft) off a precipice in the southwestern area of Yocalla.
Bolivia’s mountainous, undermaintained and poorly supervised roads are some of the deadliest in the world, claiming an average 1,400 fatalities every year.
The Pope has had two episodes of “acute respiratory failure”, the Vatican has said.
The 88-year-old has been in hospital since 14 February with a severe respiratory infection that triggered other complications.
The Vatican said the respiratory failures were caused by “significant accumulation” of mucus in his lungs and a “bronchospasm”, akin to an asthma attack.
Doctors were then required to perform two bronchoscopies – a test which sees medics use a long, thin, telescope with a light to look into the lungs – to evaluate the Pope’s air passages, the statement said.
“In the afternoon, non-invasive mechanical ventilation was resumed,” the Vatican continued. “The Holy Father has always remained vigilant, oriented and collaborative. The prognosis remains reserved.”
Vatican sources said the situation had been calm this morning, before becoming worse this afternoon.
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Behind the scenes at the Vatican
The respiratory issues the Pope suffered today are due to an ongoing infection rather than a new one but he is not out of danger, they added.
Asked if the Pope is in good spirits, they gave no answer. When asked if the Vatican’s apartment is getting ready to welcome Francis back, the source said it was too premature to discuss this.
His clinical picture remains complex, they said.
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Earlier on Monday, Pope Francis issued a written message after Vatican officials begged him to let his voice be heard following more than two weeks out of public view.
He thanked his doctors for their care and well-wishers for their prayers, before praying for peace in Ukraine and elsewhere.
“From here, war appears even more absurd,” he wrote.
People at a nightly rosary prayer for the Pope in St. Peter’s Square yesterday evening. Pic: AP
This has become the longest public absence of his 12-year papacy.
Cardinal Konrad Krajewski presided over the evening rosary prayer in St Peter’s Square on Sunday night.
“Let us pray together with the entire church for the health of the Holy Father Francis,” he said.
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