"Border Push-Backs Must Stop!": Over 100 Public Figures Sign Open Letter to the Polish Government

Last week the bodies of four people were found at the Polish-Belarussian border within 4 days. According to Grupa Granica (The Border Group), the deadly push-back policy caused the death of at least 37 people since the beginning of the humanitarian crisis; nearly 300 are missing.

Those who fell prey to the absence of any migration policy are people who, fleeing wars, violence and poverty, decided to use the treacherous intermediation of Lukashenko’s and Russian regime. However, not only those two regimes are to be blamed for the fact that instead of a life in safety those people have found only death and suffering. Their deaths and suffering are a result of the policy pursued by the Polish state that mistakes violence for power, unlawful procedures for agency, and racism and contempt for the lives of Others for patriotism and defence of borders. According to the ruling of the Regional Administration Court in Białystok, the crisis at the Polish-Belarussian border, caused by Belarussian authorities’ policy, does not absolve Polish state institutions from the requirement to observe the balance between the duty to defend borders and protect the state and the obligation to respect human rights and freedoms.

We call upon the politicians who are responsible for this situation to come to their senses. All unlawful regulations which result in the Border Guards’ practice of push-backs must be immediately removed from the Polish legal system. This applies in particular to the provisions added by the Minister of Interior and Administration to the so-called „border regulation" in August 2021 – those provisions have been enacted with obvious abuse of statutory powers, yet they permit pushing refugees back without as much as taking down their personal data or health condition.

We are grateful to, and stand in solidarity with all people and organisations who tirelessly provide humanitarian aid, including medical and legal support, at the Polish-Belarussian border. We thank them for their monitoring of the situation at the border and in refugee centres, which lets them document the fates of people on the move, record the names of those who went missing and keep searching for them. We thank all people who took upon themselves the traumatic task of searching for the bodies of those whom help did not reach on time, so that no death is nameless and forgotten.

Signatories:

Marta Abramowicz

Kasper Bajon

Natalia de Barbaro

Seweryn Blumsztajn

Ewa Błaszczyk

Katarzyna Błażejewska-Stuhr

Adam Bodnar 

Anna Bohdziewicz

Halina Bortnowska

Zofia Borucińska

Krystyna Bratkowska

Krzysztof Burnetko

Barbara Bursztyńska

Agata Buzek

Beata Chmiel

Jarosław Chołodecki

Iza Chruślińska

Przemysław Czapliński

Helena Datner

Anna Engelking

Elżbieta Ficowska

Teresa Filarska

Grzegorz Gauden

Konstanty Gebert

Lucyna Gebert

Aleksander Gleichgewicht

Agnieszka Glińska

Irena Grudzińska-Gross

Hanka Grupińska

Magdalena Grzebałkowska

Agnieszka Holland

Anna Husarska

Barbara Imiołczyk

Krystyna Janda

Zofia Jankiewicz

Agnieszka Jucewicz

Magdalena Kicińska

Jacek Kleyff

Michał Klinger

Jan Kofman

Maja Komorowska

Agnieszka Korytkowska

Joanna Kos-Krauze

Marek Kraszewski

Krzysztof Król

Ireneusz Krzemiński

Katarzyna Kubacka-Seweryn

Roman Kurkiewicz

Danuta Kuroń

Andrzej Leder

Adam Leszczyński

Agnieszka Lipska-Onyszkiewicz

Magdalena Łazarkiewicz

Olgierd Łukaszewicz

Marta Madejska

Lidka Makowska

Edward Nowak

Wojciech Onyszkiewicz

Jan Ordyński

Maja Ostaszewska

Antoni Pawlak

Antoni Pawlicki

Elżbieta Petrajtis-O'Neill

Marta Petrusewicz

Krystyna Piotrowska

Monika Płatek

Janusz Poniewierski

Maria Poniewierska

Aleksandra Popławska

Magdalena Popławska

Danuta Przywara

Piotr Pytlakowski

Tomasz Rakowicz

Andrzej Rosner

Anna Rosner

Anda Rottenberg

Kaja Rupocińska

Andrzej Rychard

Anna Samolińska

Wojciech Samoliński

Andrzej Seweryn

Krystyna Skarżyńska

Eugeniusz Smolar

Anita Sokołowska

Grażyna Staniszewska

Joanna Staręga-Piasek

Andrzej Stasiuk

Jerzy Stępień

Olga Stokłosa

Maciej Stuhr

Klementyna Suchanow

Małgorzata Szejnert

Monika Sznajderman

Anna Strzałkowska

Andrzej Titkow

Zuzanna Toeplitz

Joanna Tokarska-Bakir

Maria Topczewska

Barbara Toruńczyk

Mirosław Tryczyk

Krzysztof Warchoł

Mirosław Wlekły

Alfred Wierzbicki

Karol Wilczyński

Zofia Winawer

Ewa Winnicka

Anna Wolff-Powęska

Natalia Woroszylska

Adam Ziółkowski

Maryla Ziółkowska

Krystyna Zachwatowicz-Wajda

Jerzy Zdrada

Maria Zmarz-Koczanowicz

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