– The scene of their farewells in this forest cannot be simply described. The grown men fell into each other’s arms, not so much sobbing as a whine from somewhere deep inside. It was unimaginable despair. They realized that maybe they would never see each other again – recalls Lucyna Marciniak, the only doctor working in Białowieża, in the zone of emergency. What is the help for migrants in the emergency zone, what are the situations, what are the fears? She told Medonet.
- Lucyna Marciniak is the only doctor working in Białowieża, a village in Podlasie, located in the area covered by the state of emergency. The doctor runs the Municipal Health Center in Białowieża, and also works in the hospital in Hajnówka (outside the state of emergency)
- – There are no “Medics on the Border” and no other aid organizations here – They just don’t have the right to come in, no one from the outside has that right – the doctor tells.
- If a person in the forest needs medical attention, it can only be given to an emergency medical team that operates under state care. Everything else is against the law. This includes means that such a person cannot be taken to a car and taken to a hospital
- The so-called converted – people who came face to face with the migrant tragedy and changed the front by 180 degrees. – A meeting of a man who has the eyes of a hunted animal, who is dirty, hungry and begging, looks at us, not knowing what will happen to him, and when he knows that we will help him, he throws himself into his hands and does everything to show his gratitude – it’s an extreme experience
- In an interview with Medonet, Lucyna Marciniak told the scene of a meeting with migrants that she will never forget. She also shared her concerns about, inter alia, with the coming winter
- More current information can be found on the Onet homepage
a specialist in the field of lung diseases, a doctor of internal diseases, manages the Municipal Health Center in Białowieża.
Monika Mikołajska / Medonet: Social organizations and informal groups appeal to the government for immediate medical and humanitarian aid admission to the state of emergency. It is about the manifesto “Save People on the Border”. Doctor, since there is such a cry, the question arises, what does this help look like now?
Bow. Lucyna Marciniak: Simply put, she doesn’t look at all. I live in a state of emergency and I am the only doctor working here – I run a municipal health center. We do not have a hospital, the nearest one is in Hajnówka, outside the zone. This means that I am the only state medical facility providing help here. There are no “Medics on the Border” and no other aid organizations here – they simply do not have the right to enter here, no one from the outside has such a right (they can only operate outside the zone). A Caritas tent was put up in front of the church with great effort, but it is operated by the inhabitants of Białowieża. We ourselves established the Białowieża Humanitarian Action, which coordinates the help coming from outside, but we do everything with our own, limited forces.
To make matters worse, it is arranged in such a way that Białowieża itself is in the zone, but the three neighboring villages belonging to our commune – Pogorzelce, Teremiski and Budy, are not. This gives rise to various absurd situations. For example, the “Medyks on the Border” ambulance is located in Teremiska, 4 km from Białowieża, but I cannot use their help because they cannot enter here.
A stalemate, very frustrating.
More and more over time. At first, we thought that when there were people in need of help in the forest, the border guard would take care of them and start asylum procedures. However, we quickly realized that the migrants were packed into the truck and transported back to the border (in accordance with the amended act on foreigners, the so-called push-back act). There, the Belarusians are pushing them back to the Polish side. Some of them went through such scuffles a few or a dozen times. This made it difficult to estimate how many of these people there really were.
Further part under the video.
So a race against time has begun. If we have a signal that there are people somewhere in the forest, the first to reach them is those involved in helping. All this to be able to give them food, drink, clothes, etc. Because when the border guards arrive, it depends on the good will of the officers whether they will let them do so.
If a person from the forest needs medical help, they cannot be taken to the car and taken to the hospital – we will not leave the zone, and even if someone tries, such transport is considered a smuggling aid. All you can do then is call an ambulance. So I, from Białowieża, call the dispatcher from Białystok and explain to him which part of the forest is to be reached. Moreover, these people are often located 200-500 meters deep in the forest, and this is not a typical forest, it is a primeval forest – there are swamps, swamps, fallen trees, fallen trees. It takes a long time to get out of such a forest, even in an able-bodied person, and when he is weak or ill, he has to be taken out – the help of a few people is necessary to do it physically. The ambulance is therefore turned off for three or four hours, which means that, for example, the inhabitants of Hajnówka are deprived of it. And during that time, she could make three or four other trips.
In a hot period for us, it was so that when someone found people in need of help in the forest, he called me and asked if I would come and assess the situation, and if there was an indication whether I would call an ambulance – of course as a private person who, as it were, by accident found in this place. In a situation where I call an ambulance, I also have to call border guards. For as long as they do not appear, the migrant’s ambulance service will not take them away. The guard must give permission to take this man outside the area of the state of emergency.
Further part under the video.
What if there were ambulances ready to help, for example, “Medyków na Granicy” or other humanitarian organization?
As individuals – let’s say non-state actors – they have no right to take migrants to a hospital. The border guard can only hand them over to a medical rescue team operating within the system and state care. Everything else is against the law. Meanwhile, we know perfectly well that this care is simply very modest.
Recently, there was a situation where three people got stuck in a swamp – two children (several and teenagers) and a mother. They were unable to get out of there on their own, the younger child was almost unconscious. People who found them there called for friends. They came and one by one they started taking these migrants out of the forest, then they put them in private cars and in the meantime they called me saying that they were going to my health center. Meanwhile, I was on my way to my second job – to the hospital in Hajnówka. So I called the nurses at the center so that they were ready for action. I also called the ambulance. The dispatcher, according to the regulations, said that he could not send the team because I was not there. So we agreed that my nurses would call when the migrants arrived at the center. When I was approaching the hospital, an ambulance was speeding towards Białowieża. When she got there, it turned out that no one was there. And it happened because somewhere along the way the police stopped cars with sick migrants. It was not possible to convince the officers to first hand the patients over to paramedics and then complete the writing. An absurd situation.
I have the impression that above this help there is a climate of such action in violation of the law.
Indeed, this is the narrative from outside. They are still trying to prove to us that we are acting illegally. And we just want to give these people normal human help.
Fortunately, when migrants are hospitalized, most stories end well, in the sense that they are given medical attention, warmed, fed, dressed, etc. A hospital stay, even for a short time, gives us time to formally handle the asylum procedure. If it succeeds, the guard picking the man up from the hospital should not take him back to the border. He is taken to the border guard post, and then he is taken over by the foundation or taken to the center.
Photo. WOJTEK RADWANSKI/AFP/East News
How do the inhabitants of Białowieża feel in this difficult and unusual situation?
This is an evolving process. There is a group that helps, including those who help “quietly” and don’t want anyone to know about it. There is an opposing group. They are also undecided.
Older people are very kind – they remember the hard times of war and what came after. There was once a situation when seven boys from Syria ended up in Białowieża. They were completely soaked and exhausted. The police stopped them there. Suddenly, within a dozen or so minutes old ladies ran out of the neighboring houses, one of them brought rolls, the other tea, another organized seven pairs of trousers. It all happened on its own, but neither of them really wanted to talk about it.
The group of the so-called converts – people who came face to face with the tragedy of migrants and changed the front by 180 degrees. Meeting a man who is scared, who has the eyes of a hunted animal, who is dirty, hungry and begging, looks at us, not knowing what will happen to him, and when he knows that we will help him, he throws himself into his hands and does everything, to be grateful – it’s an extreme experience. When a child throws himself into water and food – then the toughest ones will soften. Such an experience destroys all previous negative views related to the border crisis.
You have certainly faced the difficult situation of migrants more than once, also as a doctor. Can you share your experience with us?
I will not forget my first meeting with migrants in the forest. It was two young Syrians, maybe brothers, maybe friends – I don’t know, at least they traveled together. They were educated people who spoke English fluently. The first man was in good shape. The other one had a knee injury and was unable to walk any further. So the men had to separate. The healthy one had to go deep into the forest, the injured had to be taken to the hospital. The scene of their farewells in this forest cannot be simply described. The grown men fell into each other’s arms, not so much sobbing as a whine from somewhere deep inside. It was unimaginable despair. They realized that maybe they would never see each other again. There were five of us there, we all looked away, we couldn’t take it.
The next day I was on duty at the hospital, so there was a chance to see the man with the injury. Honestly, if I hadn’t known it was him, I wouldn’t have known him. He was fed, hydrated, washed – a completely different man. I would also like to say that no one has ever been as happy to see me as he was. We saw each other in the forest for about 20 minutes, but a bond and such mutual responsibility developed between us, strangers.
The question is how many people can be saved in this way. Two, five, maybe a dozen?
That’s right, and we know it. At one point, the scale of the phenomenon was such that we became completely impotent. Because if you can reach a man in the forest, give him hot tea, soup, dry socks and tell him, “that would be it, I can’t do anything more for you”, it is terrible.
Do you see any way out?
There is no good solution. On the one hand, the influx of migrants must definitely be stopped. Looking back, however, it seems that the number of people that were there could have been given humanitarian aid. It can shorten or simplify asylum procedures, verify faster who has a family somewhere in Europe – I don’t know. But to be human.
What is most important is that aid should not be just about supplying these people and taking them back to the border. This does not solve the problem, and means that these people keep circling between us and Belarus, and their agony in the forest is simply prolonged.
Fot. Stefan Maszewski/ REPORTER/ East News
And what is the scale of human losses? – we do not know.
This will probably turn out in the coming years. Until now, many of us considered going to the forest the greatest fun – I do not know if it will continue to do so. Will I not be afraid to go mushroom picking, to go to the forest by bike? It has not happened so far, now I have big doubts. After all, we will come across various traces of migrants’ presence – traces of camps, sleeping bags, clothes, not to mention extreme situations, human remains.
In addition, winter is fast approaching.
I can only ask God not to let these people freeze for us. We can’t stand it mentally. I have a house almost on the outskirts of the village, I can see the wall of a strict reserve from my windows. How can I sit at home and drink coffee while warm, knowing that someone may be dying a few hundred meters from me? Just do not. These are basic human reflexes. And we live in a country where it is so emphasized that human life is the greatest value.
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