A few days before taking part in AWoN’s 4th Annual Summit, two of our practitioners, Zoé Balakrishnan, AWoN Board member and Learning & Exchange Programme Coordinator, and Aude Sathoud, AWoN Communications and Fundraising Coordinator, got to join Anna Alboth, AWoN Advisory Board member, journalist and activist, in one of the bases from which Grupa Granica activists have been operating for the past four years to provide assistance to people on the move crossing the Polish-Belarusian border.
Since 2021, indeed, the east of Poland has been the location of one of the most cynical, harsh and yet too quickly forgotten hotspots of border violence and asylum rights violations in Europe. Artificially created by Presidents Putin and Loukachenko, the migration path that was opened through the forest turns people into no less than weapons in a war of pressure and intimidation, fooling them into thinking that they will be granted asylum as soon as they step foot into the European Union. Abused and pushed by Belarusian soldiers, they are pushed back with increasing violence by Polish border guards, in a complete violation of human and asylum rights on both sides.
Zoé and Aude, whose visit was made possible by AWoN’s Peer-to-Peer visit fund, supported by UMCOR, had the opportunity to meet and exchange with local activists, receive training in emergency support, and learn more about the situation.
Drones, gun shots and khaki trucks – echoes of Eastern Europe (Aude)
‘Zoé, Anna and I drove hours through the east of Germany and then almost the whole of Poland, to get to the house. I had never been there, nor ever encountered a country through its literal crossing. It rained most of the journey. I understood we were going away as the radio started speaking in a language I could not understand. Singing religious chants, too. We arrived at night, were welcomed by barks, warm pancakes and black tea. Our hosts for the weekend were still awake, showed us around, handed us blankets.
It was a small wooden and quiet place, surrounded by fields, at the end of a road, in a remote village. Bordering the Polish-Belarusian forest, the oldest in Europe. Further south, a few days earlier, Russian drones had entered Polish skies and crashed on some empty houses’ roof. Now, as we were unpacking, the joint military exercises between Russia and Belarus, taking place every four years along their western border, was about to begin. We were expecting few to no calls to the hotline. Zoé and I nonetheless received the usual newcomers’ training on the following morning. The base and team were impressively organized. Two rooms were dedicated to the storage of supplies – warm clothes, hiking boots, emergency blankets, snacks, phone batteries. Pre-filled backpacks and medical kits were ready to go, secured phones charging, and tens of thermos bottles stood on shelves, waiting for hot soups and teas to warm up and comfort freezing bodies. We got introduced to the local maps, operation procedures, and vocabulary.
Later on, Anna took us on a drive through the forest – and time. She showed us the locations where the military checkpoints had been set up in the first months of the ‘crisis’, in 2021, after the Polish government had declared a state of emergency in the area. Cars were stopped, their trunks searched, people questioned. We passed some khaki trucks a few times – the ones used by Polish soldiers to push people back to Belarus. ‘When their blind is lowered – it means they are full’, Anna explained to us. We kept anxiously checking each one we crossed path with until the end of the week.’
Beauty and anger, quietness and fear – memories from the forest (Zoé)
‘A feeling that will stay with me for a long time after this visit is the stark contrast between the beauty of the forest and quietness of the region, and the profound anger at what happens inside the forest as life goes on around it. The long-lasting impact this situation will have on the local population – activists, border guards or those keeping their distance entirely – is almost palpable as you drive through small villages and forest paths.
Spending a few days immersed with the kind volunteers of Grupa Granica was incredibly enriching on the professional side, as we discussed how they run their operations, but also the challenges they’ve encountered along the way and the lessons learned. I was impressed by the choices they made to ensure that their support would last in time.
Being introduced to this environment by a fellow AWoN practitioner was extremely valuable, and gave us an occasion to connect even more personally as well. I feel we’ve done what we do best: we’ve shown up in a place where practitioners need support, learnt about their work but also the history and culture of the region we were in, to better understand not only a situation but the people in it.’
Support for AWoN’s Peer-to-Peer Visit Fund was provided by a grant from UMCOR.
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Cover picture: Anna guiding Zoé and Aude through the Poland-Belarus border-forest, September 2025