{"id":5809,"date":"2026-09-06T17:11:29","date_gmt":"2026-09-06T17:11:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.borderforensics.org\/?post_type=investigation&p=5809"},"modified":"2026-09-08T15:19:48","modified_gmt":"2026-09-08T15:19:48","slug":"poland-investigation","status":"publish","type":"investigation","link":"https:\/\/www.borderforensics.org\/ar\/investigations\/poland-investigation\/","title":{"rendered":"The Death Zone – The Making of a Lethal Pushback Regime Across the Polish\u2013Belarusian Borderlands"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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An investigation by the Circumference of Violence, Infrastructuring Nature, and Border Forensics<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Download full report: The Death Zone – The Making of a Lethal Pushback Regime Across the Polish\u2013Belarusian Borderlands<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Launch mapping platform: The Death Zone – Mapping Violence in the Polish\u2013Belarusian Borderlands<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Summary<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In the summer of 2021, amid rising geopolitical tensions, the government of Belarus facilitated the crossing of its borders with neighbouring European Union (EU)\u0001\u0001 countries by illegalised migrants from the Global South. Considering the way EU countries have framed migrants as threats and criminalised their mobility, the Belarus government aimed for these crossings to have a destabilising effect on the EU. In response, Poland, Latvia, and Lithuania denounced this practice as a form of \u201chybrid warfare\u201d enacted through the \u201cinstrumentalisation\u201d of migrants. In the aim of preventing migrants from arriving on their territories and seeking protection, the governments of these countries swiftly instituted exceptional legislation, erected exclusionary border infrastructure, and deployed large numbers of law enforcement agents to their borders. Their policies, which received the full backing of the EU, have constituted a pushback regime that has been consolidated over the last five years. As a result, migrants seeking to cross the borders between Belarus and EU countries have been subjected to widespread violations of their rights and recurring acts of violence by law enforcement agents. This investigation focuses on the vast space of the Polish\u2013Belarusian borderlands which has seen the starkest developments. In particular 102 migrant deaths have been documented since 2021 and many more disappearances reported.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Figure 1: A group of migrants at the Belarus\u2013Poland border in August 2021, close to the village of Usnarz G\u00f3rny. Migrants are encircled by authorities from both sides, Polish authorities in front, Belarusian authorities at the treeline behind blocking them from advancing or retreating. Photograph by Maciej Moskwa, 2021.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This investigation mobilises a broad range of methods and fact-based analysis to answer the following key questions: How has this lethal pushback regime emerged? How has it been consolidated over the last five years? How have border policies, practices, infrastructure, and the environment converged to structurally generate violence, deaths, and disappearances? Who should be held accountable for the different forms of harm experienced by migrants?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To answer these questions, we have led an investigation over two years. The research has been led by the researchers and fellows of the Circumference of Violence and Infrastructuring Nature research projects and the investigative agency Border Forensics. We have further collaborated with a number of Polish researchers and civil society actors, in particular We Are Monitoring, Podlasie Volunteer Humanitarian Emergency Service, Egala Association, M\u00e9decins Sans Fronti\u00e8res, Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, Border Deaths Monitoring Group and Piotr Czaban \u2014 investigative journalist and creator of the Czaban Robi Raban channel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our research has combined the analysis of a broad range of data types\u2014that have been generated by civil society actors over the last five years or specifically for this investigation\u2014with an equally wide range of methods\u2014from ethnographic research to discourse analysis, from forensic reconstruction to geostatistical analysis. We offer a unique evidence-based account of the emergence and functioning of this lethal pushback regime, with a focus on the combined and cumulative forms of violence that structurally culminate in migrants\u2019 deaths and disappearances. By analysing the specific causal chains and recurring mechanisms leading to these human tragedies, and confronting these findings with geostatistical analysis, we demonstrate that the Polish and Belarusian state policies, infrastructure, and law enforcement practices have knowingly exposed migrants to environmental conditions\u2014forests, rivers, and the cold in particular\u2014that have proven lethal. The report further accounts for the discursive, legal, and political processes, both at the national and European levels, that have allowed this lethal pushback regime to be consolidated over the last five years. This consolidation has occurred despite the 2023 change in government from the right-wing PiS government to the centrist coalition government led by Donald Tusk \u2014who had included in his campaign the aim of ending violations of migrants rights and deaths. In fact, over time the pushback regime has become more entrenched at the national level\u2014as exemplified by the 2025 law suspending asylum\u2014and become a model for the Crisis Regulation included in the EU\u2019s new Pact on Migration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The main outcomes of this investigation are an extensive report<\/a> in which we account for the emergence, functioning, harmful effects, and consolidation of the lethal pushback regime across the Polish\u2013Belarusian borderlands over the last five years, as well as an interactive online mapping platform<\/a> which brings together the multiple sources of data we relied on for our analysis. By drawing on the data and knowledge gathered by Polish civil society actors and researchers over the years, and supplementing them with new data and methods, our aim is for this report and platform to offer a comprehensive account of the dynamics generating border violence across the Polish\u2013Belarusian borderlands and to constitute a robust evidentiary base that may support demands for accountability and advocacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Main Findings<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Migrants\u2019 border crossings were made into a crisis<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

By denouncing Belarus\u2019s facilitation of the crossing of its borders with neighbouring European Union (EU) countries by illegalised migrants from the Global South as a form of \u201chybrid warfare\u201d enacted through the \u201cinstrumentalisation\u201d of migrants, Poland has discursively transformed people seeking protection into security threats and weapons in the hands of a hostile state. In turn this framing has enabled exceptional legal, military, administrative, and infrastructural measures enacted by Poland with the support of the EU. Together these measures created a lethal pushback regime that has been consolidated over the last five years. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Figure 2: Graph showing threat and humanitarian vocabularies in media and political discourse. The graph indicates raw keyword counts per quarter: the blue line represents threat-related keyword totals; the orange line represents humanitarian keyword totals. This figure shows that humanitarian language rises together with threat language in 2021; migrants\u2019 suffering remains visible, but becomes politically subordinated to a broader narrative of emergency, border defence, and hybrid attack. Graph by Border Forensics, 2026.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The pushback regime is enabled by an architecture of enmity<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The investigation shows how exclusion zones, military and police deployments, border fences, patrol roads, cameras, sensors, and surveillance systems have formed an architecture of enmity. This architecture reorganises the borderland: it channels movement, controls visibility, restricts access, obstructs assistance, and produces differentiated positions of power and exposure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Figure 3: This illustration traces the phased construction of Poland’s border barrier: from the initial razor-wire fence erected in 2021, to the 5.5-metre steel wall completed in June 2022, to the electronic surveillance components added in 2023, and subsequent layers of reinforcement. Below, the phased construction of the border infrastructure is mapped against fence-related injuries reported by humanitarian and medical organisations along the route. Illustration by Border Forensics, 2026.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Forms of violence are combined and cumulative<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The different forms of harm documented at the border rarely occur in isolation. A person may be pushed forward by Belarusian forces, pushed back by Polish forces, beaten, stripped of belongings, injured by the fence, forced to reroute through swamps or rivers, separated from companions, hurt while climbing the fence, exposed to cold, and denied assistance. We show that these different forms and moments of harm combine and acumulate in migrants\u2019 experiences as they remain trapped in repeated cycles of pushforward and pushback for extensive periods of time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Figure 4: Map of Bashir’s journey through the Polish\u2013Belarusian borderlands, documented by We Are Monitoring. The map illustrates how Bashir was subjected to violence during successive cycles of forced entry into Poland followed by pushbacks by Polish authorities. Map by Border Forensics, 2026.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The environment has been weaponised<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Cold, humidity, rivers, vast and dense forests do not harm independently of the pushback regime. They come to be enlisted into mechanisms of harm when border practices prolong time in the forest, force people into more dangerous routes, make rescue harder, and convert distance into abandonment. Environmentally mediated violence is therefore shaped by distinct law enforcement practices and spatial conditions created by the pushback regime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Figure 5: Maps by Border Forensics, 2026.
Modelled cumulative cold exposure and distress-call clusters along the Poland\u2013Belarus border. This map overlays a scenario-based surface of cumulative cold exposure across the borderland with the spatial distribution of documented distress-call clusters. The blue surface represents the modelled intensity of cold exposure under the selected delay scenario, while yellow circles indicate distress-call locations\/clusters. These layers show that exposure is produced not only by environmental conditions, but by the interaction between terrain, bordering infrastructures, and the forced duration of migrants\u2019 immobility or rerouting.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Deaths and disappearances are the culmination of different forms violence<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The investigation focuses on deaths and disappearances not because they are the only forms of harm, but because they are the most extreme expressions and culmination of the different forms of violence and violation of rights that have been the structural outcome of the pushback regime. The detailed counter-investigation of ten lethal incidents, the analysis of a dataset of 102 verified and geocoded death cases, further compared with records relating to potential border-related disappearances, shows that deaths and disappearances are the outcome of similar operational sequences and concentrate in spaces where movement is slowed, visibility is reduced, communication is fragile, and search or rescue is delayed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Figure 6: Map showing documented cases of death and disappearance at the border. Map by Border Forensics, 2026.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Disappearance is itself a form of violence<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Disappearance extends border violence beyond the moment of crossing. Families are left in uncertainty, often across continents, forced to search through hospitals, police stations, detention facilities, morgues, NGOs, and fragmented official systems. The absence of a body, a record, or an answer is not a gap outside the pushback regime; it is one of its effects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Figure 7: Photograph of a sign marking an NN grave \u2014 an unidentified body \u2014 at the Bohoniki Tatar Muslim cemetery (known as a “mizar”), illustrating how disappearances at the border often leave no trace of who the person was. Photograph by Maciej Moskwa, 2024.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Indirect violence has led to the evasion of accountability<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Our analysis of the attempts to seek accountability before both Polish and European courts for pushbacks and violence reveals that the responsibility of both the Polish and Belarusian states and their law enforcement agents have been evaded. In Poland, what has emerged is a condition of impunity behind a simulacrum of procedural accountability. In particular, many deaths are officially framed as related to the environment and the outcome of immediate physiological causes such as hypothermia or drowning. This occludes the chains of decisions and omissions that led to the environment being made lethal for migrants: pushforwards, pushbacks, blocked rescue, delayed assistance, forced exposure. Ultimately, law and legal processes have failed to limit state violence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Figure 8: Timeline of the demand for accountability concerning the death of Mahlet Kassa. Timeline by Border Forensics, 2026.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Violence has become normalised<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Despite documented deaths, disappearances, injuries, pushbacks, and court challenges, the lethal pushback regime has been consolidated over time. Threat narratives have been repeatedly reactivated and violence has faded from public visibility. Accountability has been evaded. Legal frameworks have been reshaped around counter-instrumentalisation both at national and EU levels, as exemplified by the 2025 Polish law suspending asylum and the Crisis Regulation included in EU\u2019s new Pact on Migration. Practices once presented as exceptional have become routine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Figure 9: Threat vocabulary, harm vocabulary and documented deaths by quarter, 2021\u20132025. The figure compares quarterly documented deaths at the Poland\u2013Belarus border with two lexical rates in the media corpus: threat vocabulary and harm vocabulary. Threat vocabulary refers to words associated with security, attack, pressure, crisis, aggression and instrumentalisation. Harm vocabulary refers to words associated with death, bodies, victims, hypothermia, drowning, disappearance and suffering. Both are normalised per 10,000 tokens. The figure does not show that violence entirely disappears from public discourse; rather, it shows a shift in balance: from late 2023 onwards, harm vocabulary becomes less visible while threat vocabulary remains high, even as deaths continue to be documented. Graph by Border Forensics, 2026.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

As of 2026, the Polish government has promoted a narrative of the successful closure of its border with Belarus. Beyond empirically assessing Poland\u2019s claim to \u201csuccess\u201d in relation to migration dynamics\u2014an increase in movement across the border with Lithuania has been reported, from where migrants continue to move into Poland\u2014we believe the essential question the spectacle border security occludes is: what has been the cost of five years of policies, infrastructure, and law enforcement practices aiming to impose border closure?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our investigation demonstrates if the instrumentalisation of migrants\u2019 lives by the Belarusian government is appalling, it could only be effective because of the prior conditions created by Poland and the EU \u2013the construction of migrants as threats, the absence of legal pathways for most migrants of the Global South, and the externalisation of border control to non-European states. In turn the pushback regime imposed by Poland has come at an exorbitant human cost, as the lives and rights of migrants have been systematically violated, and these practices have culminated in 102 recorded deaths and numerous disappearances. Poland and the EU\u2019s policies further pose grave risks for their societies and polities. While migrants seeking protection do not raise any serious security threat for Poland or the EU, the undermining of fundamental norms of human dignity, rule of law, and human rights does.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In our report we formulate key recommendations for Poland and the EU to fundamentally change the orientation of their migration and border policies. We argue that such a reorientation, which should include ending the construction of migrants as threats and creating safe and legal pathways for mobility, is the condition to durably end border violence across the Polish-Belarussian borderlands and prevent the instrumentalisation of migration by non-European states. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a first and essential step in this direction, Poland and the EU should start by heeding the demands for accountability repeatedly voiced by the victims of border violence and their families. In this spirit, we conclude with the demand for justice of the uncle of the late Mahlet Kassa, who died in the forest in February 2023 after Polish border guards failed to assist her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEven though Mahlet Kassa \u0001is no longer alive, we still cannot accept the lack of accountability. For us, this case is not closed. We are emotionally exhausted. Mahlet died because she was denied assistance. For me, that is unimaginable. We continue to demand at least a measure of justice. I think about her every day. We are worn down by helplessness. It cannot be right that she lost her life, that we know why it happened, and yet no one does anything about it.” <\/em>Seyoume Shashego,<\/em> Uncle of the late Mahlet Kassa, 2025<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Figure 10: Portrait of Mahlet Kassa. Unknown Photographer, date unknown. Photo courtesy of Hope and Humanity Poland.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Investigation Team<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Lead Researchers<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Director of Research: Charles Heller<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Research Coordinator and Lead Researcher: Peter Teunissen<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Field Coordinator and Lead Researcher: Katarzyna Czarnota<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lead Researcher: Alessandro Mangione<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Geostatistical Analyst: Stanislas Michel<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Visual and Spatial Analysis<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Spatial analysis and cartography: Nico Alexandroff, Jack Isles, Samuel N. Chambers and Ee-Faye Chong<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Remote sensing: Rossana Padeletti<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Collaborating Organisations<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

We Are Monitoring (WAM), Podlasie Volunteer Humanitarian Emergency Service (POPH), Egala Association (Egala), M\u00e9decins Sans Fronti\u00e8res (MSF), Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights (HFHR), Border Deaths Monitoring Group (BDMG) and Piotr Czaban \u2014 investigative journalist and creator of the Czaban Robi Raban channel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Extended <\/strong>Research and Production Team<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Discourse Analysis: Ksnenia Homel, Aleksandra Szkudlarek, Aleksandra Grzyma\u0142a-Kaz\u0142owska<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Legal analysis: Maja Lysienia, Marcin Czachor<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Historical analysis: Natalia Judzi\u0144ska<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Supporting fieldwork and analysis: Reem Mussa<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Supporting qualitative and qualitative data analysis: Kuba Bieniasz, Nana Ciaston, Marysia Czuchnowska, Ania Migdal, and Clara Zinecker<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Supporting the reconstruction and analysis of facts: Aleksandra Chrzanowska, Anna Kolberg, Ma\u0142gorzata Klemens, Eliza Kowalczyk, Rafa\u0142 Kowalczyk, Marcin Czachor, Adam Wajrak, Katarzyna Nowak, and Piotr Czaban<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fieldwork support: Anka Kolber, Ma\u0142gorzata Klemens, Urszula Wolfram, Mateusz Rybak, Eliza Kowalczyk, and Adam Wajrak<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Interactive platform development: Rectangle. Framework originally developed at Forensic Architecture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Report design and layout: Robert Preusse and Tessa Darimont<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Web layout and programing: Morad T.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Copy Editing: Matilda Tayler<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Translation: Jagoda Dolnska, Yasmeen Alsaqa, and Murielle Jackson<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Project Support: Agn\u00e8s Fiama Papone and Natalina Haller<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Strategic Communication: Hope Barker<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Funding<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The core partners of this project wish to thank the following funders who made this investigation possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Circumference of Violence project<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Infrastructuring Nature<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Border Forensics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Katarzyna Czarnota\u2019s research presented in this report builds on her research and fieldwork on the Polish\u2013Belarusian border, including projects she led and coordinated at the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights between 2021 and 2024, with the support of:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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