The Polish Border Guard lost two court cases with migrants after an Afghan and Ethiopian man filed complaints about the procedure of transporting them back to Belarus. Both complainants said they suffered from bad treatment by the officers and were illegally directed to the other side of the border fence despite asking for international protection.  

The Administrative Court in Bialystok decided to grant a complaint of an Afghan man who, on the night of 3 April 2023, while crossing the border barrier, fell from a height and suffered a broken foot. He was then put in a plaster cast in a Polish hospital and was later taken back to Belarus. There he was treated in a hospital in Brest, and when he left Minsk, Polish activists advised him that he could complain to the administrative court about the procedure of being turned back to Belarus. 

The complaint of another Ethiopian man redirected back to Belarus, who broke his shin by falling off a ladder attached to the border barrier had a similar ending. 

“The man is from Ethiopia and is homosexual. In Ethiopia, homosexuality is illegal and punishable by imprisonment from one to 15 years. On 12 April 2023, he arrived in Moscow and on the morning of 6 May 2023, he and the people he met attempted to enter Poland by crossing the border fence using a ladder,” the court said in its final statement, indicating there were reasons to allow international protection to the migrant.

As the court decision indicates, his asylum request, written on a tissue, was ignored: ‘I want asylum here in Poland, please’, wrote the migrant.

In both cases, the court indicated that the Border Guard should either accept the migrant’s application for asylum or carry out a control of the legality of their stay on the territory of Poland. The court found that the complaint against such actions of the Polish services was justified.

The complaining foreigners were granted PLN 697 in return for the court expenses. A spokesperson of the Podlaskie Branch of the Border Guard told the Polish news website, Wirtualna Polska, that these funds had already been returned.

The favourable verdict of the administrative court opens the way for other migrants to possibly seek compensation through a civil suit against Polish state security services. 

In the first case filed by migrants trying to cross to Poland, three Afghanistan citizens demanded around £47,000. The court proceedings in that case are still ongoing because two of the migrants have already left Poland.

The Border Guard told Wirtualna Polska that officers ask migrants to file declarations that they know about the possibility of applying for asylum. According to the Border Guard, when most migrants find out that by applying for international protection in Poland they will not be able to travel to Germany, they are not interested in taking such a decision and are redirected back to Belarus. 

Tomasz Modrzejewski

Photo: X @StrazGraniczna