Poland: On the Road with an Activist Rescuing Migrants (Video)

We meet Nawal Soufi in the dark, in a lonely parking lot in eastern Poland, not far from the border with Belarus. It’s Wednesday evening. At the moment she is talking to a 44-year-old Syrian who is out and about in the freezing cold in the border area on her cell phone, assuring him that employees of a local aid organization are almost with him: “Don’t be afraid, they will be there in a moment.” “In these moments I feel like a mother whose child is in danger and she is now waiting for news. We are only a few meters apart and you can see that there is almost no place at the border that is not monitored.” The Moroccan-Italian activist came to Poland to help. Until the refugee crisis on the EU’s eastern border, the 33-year-old helped migrants on and off the Italian coast. Here in Poland, too, she wants to bring people to safety. Not an easy mission and quite dangerous. Because security forces did not shy away from beatings, she says. “If we, as volunteers and activists, have to endure this, what do migrants have to endure every day? That is the question. This thought keeps me going, not losing hope, and encourages me to go back and help.” The Polish authorities reject the allegations of violence. And yet the migrants have every reason to move in the dark. Because if there is a way to Poland, it is probably at night. And then finally Nawal’s protégé is found. She sends the location of the Syrian to the Polish helpers. For days she had accompanied the father of three Homs children from afar. On Tuesday, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Poland must first allow him to stay and look after him in order to protect his life. Nawal and her colleagues had previously filed a lawsuit on behalf of the Syrian. With the decision of the court in the back, it was now possible to call an ambulance to have the man taken care of. Nawal reports that the father of three children from Homs is hypothermic. He was walking barefoot.