A state of emergency still prevails on the border between Poland and Belarus

Part of Poland on the border with Belarus is still protected from outsiders, so it is not clear what happens to migrants there. Rules that apply in the rest of the European Union have been suspended.

Originally because Poland would not be able to cope with the influx of migrants otherwise. But now the number of people trying to cross the border here has dwindled. Yet the EU does not intervene, much to the frustration of Poland in the area.

Normally, Białowieża, a World Heritage-listed village, has to rely on tourists who come to see the old wooden houses. Nature lovers head into the old-growth forest to spot birds and bison.

But at the tourist office on the edge of the forest it is empty. “People do come”, the employee says cautiously, but they are “a different kind of tourists”.

For months now, the military and border police have come to the tourist office to ask for tips and brochures. Apart from a handful of residents, nobody else is welcome in ‘the zone’.

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Joanna Łapińska lives there and mainly sees armored vehicles, tanks and helicopters in her village. “The atmosphere is like a war movie,” she says. She drove out of the area for the interview. She thinks the most bizarre are the soldiers jogging through the streets. “How can you jog in the midst of a humanitarian crisis? While people are freezing in the forest?”

Those people are the migrants who are trying to enter the European Union here in Poland via Belarus. It is difficult to give reliable figures of how many people try that. At the lowest point last summer, the Polish authorities reported that they were detaining about a hundred people every day. By now it would be several dozen.

We explain why thousands of migrants are trapped between Poland and Belarus in this video:

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