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Heavily pregnant Iraqi woman makes it across the Polish border
Umm Malak hid in the ice-cold forests on the Polish-Belarusian border and tried six times to cross the border with her three young daughters. Their hope: to reach Germany and lead a better life. Heavily pregnant Umm Malak is one of the thousands of migrants who were stranded in the border dispute between the EU and Belarus before she made it to Poland. It was the toughest two months of her life, but she is sure that it was worth it. “The future of my children, I have to think of that first, because there is no future in Iraq, neither for us nor for them. I have a glimmer of hope that I will offer them a future.” Umm Malak is now housed in an open migrant center in the Polish city of Bialystok with her husband and daughters. “I would advise anyone thinking of coming, because in Iraq there is no future, no security, nothing. So bear the difficulties of the trip for a month or two, for a week or two instead to suffer in Iraq for years. ” She says that the Polish authorities caught her trying to cross the border several times and brought her back. Once she fell into a pond, fell ill, was detained for several days by the Polish authorities and finally taken to the center for migrants. Neither the border police nor the authorities wanted to comment on Malak’s case when asked, which is why it is not possible to verify their descriptions. Some of the migrants at the center in Bialystok do not share Umm Malak’s view. They regret starting the trip and warned relatives in their home countries not to go down the same path.
For two months, the 26-year-old Iraqi woman was one of those stranded on the border between Belarus and Poland. Now she hopes for a better future.