A snowy, slippery road leads to a house on the outskirts of a small town near the border with Belarus. It is the headquarters of Sienos Grupė (the Border Group), a voluntary organisation providing humanitarian aid to migrants.
Marija, one of the thirty volunteers, greets us and takes us inside, where we immediately see piles of clothes.
“These are things that we received from our partners. We need to sort them to see what is suitable for winter in the forest,” Marija said.
Looking closer, we notice not only clothes but also medicine, sleeping bags, tents. These are donated items that volunteers who help migrants may need at any time.
At least two people are on duty at the headquarters of Sienos Grupė at any time of the day. They have one car. According to Marija, migrants who need assistance find them on social media.
“We have a phone number, which is public. Migrants can call us when they need help. Most of the time, they contact us indirectly. For example, a brother who lives in Germany may write to us, saying that his brother is in danger with a couple of other people,” the volunteer said.
Today, Mantautas is on duty along with Marija.
“Once, one of us was walking together with a woman who lives in the forest. Listening to our stories about migrants, she said that ‘the wolves will not starve this winter’,” the volunteer said. “It sounds dramatic, but the conditions are deadly for people from the south. Lithuanians themselves are freezing in forests if they go there unprepared.”
He recalls a story of a group of migrants that was pushed between Lithuania and Belarus at least five times. “Sometimes migrants cannot get out of the forest even if they want to,” Mantautas said, adding that they are in a desperate situation because of the cold and deteriorating health.
Rescue mission
We find out that Sienos Grupė has been in contact with one group of migrants for five days. The foreigners, who say they come from Pakistan, are in Lithuania near the border with Belarus.
“These days, [the temperature] is ten degrees below zero, and they are camping in the forest. Our group is helping them not to freeze to death. Every day, we give them warm food, new dry clothes, and sleeping bags,” Mantautas said.
Asked if the volunteers should not inform the border guards about the migrants in the forest, he answers vaguely.
“It is not a crime to give food or clothes to someone who is freezing. And it’s not necessary to check documents of people with darker complexions or call the police when you see them. It is a very dangerous thing if we start judging a person’s legality or illegality based on one’s face,” Mantautas said.
“Yes, there are some partisan methods [in helping migrants], but the fact that you have to resort to them to do something good reveals the absurdity of the situation,” he added.
As we talk, the volunteers receive important news – a document from the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), which prohibits pushing the group of Pakistani migrants back to Belarus.
The volunteers discuss among themselves and decide that they need to pass this document on to the migrants as soon as possible.
The plan is to go to the group, give them the document, and then inform the border guards about their whereabouts.
The place where a group of Pakistani migrants has been camping for five days is more than a hundred kilometres away. It is getting dark.
The migrants’ camping place is outside the emergency zone but a few kilometres from the destination, we are stopped by the police. They check the driver’s documents and allow us to drive on.
We drive on a narrow forest road. Soon, the GPS tells us that we have reached our destination. Footprints in the snow lead to a migrant tent.
“I don't understand. I can only speak Urdu. Asylum. Asylum Lithuania,” one of the four Pakistani men is repeating.
“They want to ask for asylum in Lithuania. But we often hear about migrant push backs. So, we turned to the ECHR, asking for temporary protection for these migrants,” said Ugnė Raščiūtė, another volunteer at Sienos Grupė.
“Today, we have received a court decision that they can apply for asylum and not be turned back to Belarus. These people have suffered a lot of violence. One of them cried when he spoke today,” she added.
Raščiūtė hands the court document over to the migrants and explains that they will need to show it to the border guards whom she will call shortly.
The temperature is 14 degrees below zero. About 15 minutes later, a team of five border guards arrives.
They ask the volunteers how long they have known about this group of migrants. It is Wednesday. The volunteers tell officers that they have been in contact with the foreigners since Saturday.
“Since Saturday? And you only called today? It would have been the civic thing to do to inform, you know,” one of the border guards says.
“Yes, we try to cooperate. But we are struggling. So now we see that the civic thing to do is to be human, and we did the best we could so that the people are not pushed back to Belarus and have the opportunity to apply for asylum in Lithuania,” the volunteer replies.
The border guards are taking the migrants to the Kabeliai frontier station.
“Asylum Lithuania,” the foreigners kept repeating while being taken to the officers’ car.
The five-day migrant drama in the Lithuanian forest is over. This is the first time that volunteers at Sienos Grupė have been able to provide not only humanitarian but also legal assistance to migrants.
The State Border Guard Service (VSAT) promises to comply with the international court's order but is critical of the volunteers’ actions.
“I would say it is very irresponsible behaviour. These people were abandoned and were living in very difficult winter conditions. This was not reported to the VSAT officers,” said Rustamas Liubajevas, head of VSAT.
“The NGOs argue that if they had reported on Saturday, the migrants would have been turned away, and they were waiting for the ECHR's decision. There is no doubt that the judgement and the interim measures that have been imposed will be enforced. In the meantime, there will be no returning [them to Belarus],” he added.
As the Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko has ordered “warehouses to be cleared” of migrants, volunteers are receiving information on possible new arrivals of migrants.
“Some people, who wanted to go back to Iraq or Syria and had all the necessary documents, wrote to us saying that they were arrested in Minsk and brought back to the border,” Mantautas of Sienos Grupė said.
“All of this is happening right now, and it looks like there will be an increase [in the number of migrants],” he added.
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