Support No Borders Team from Poland

The Belarusian services force them to cross the border, the Polish services subject them to illegal pushback, turning them over to the other side. Left on their own, in the border forests, they are forced into constant hiding and struggle for life. Cold, wet and beaten, they sometimes spend several days there. The Polish state does not offer them any protection; the EU’s solution is violence against the defenceless. The only support they can count on is that of grassroots groups which, despite the criminalisation of all aid activities, have been active for several months in Podlasie (a region in Poland on the border with Belarus).

From the very beginning of the opening of the eastern corridor in August 2021:

we have been helping people on the move by providing first aid, warm food and dry clothes;

we support people kept in prisons for migrants, putting them in contact with translators and lawyers, assisting with asylum procedures and enabling them to contact relatives;

we organise solidarity pickets in front of the prisons and try to publicise and support all people in detention, especially those who have decided to protest and go on hunger strike (in last 14 months, several hunger strikes have taken place in detention centres);

we try to support people on the move, already outside Poland, in Western European countries, e.g. with asylum procedures;

we provide information on what is happening in Poland from an anarchist perspective. We try to change the discourse on borders and segregation policy in order to support people on the move as much as possible and to avoid treating the current situation as charity and humanitarian aid only. Our work emphasises the political and systemic nature of violence and discrimination.

In order to carry out these activities effectively, we need funds for, among other things:

gasoline (we commute to every place on the Polish-Belarusian border, each trip is several dozen kilometres)

repair and maintenance of the vehicles

maintenance of aid infrastructure at the border

warm clothes and shoes that we give to people on the way

basic medical equipment, dressings and medicines

food

sleeping bags

hygiene products

power banks

smartphones and sim cards

forestry equipment (headlamps, compasses)

support for migrants in detention centres and those being released from them

anti-repression support for activists helping at the border (due to criminalisation of aid by the authorities)

In this unequal struggle we have the army, police and border guards against us. It’s a large repressive apparatus that implements policies of segregation and supports the capitalist mechanisms of exploitation of the countries of the Global South. It’s a system that wants to break solidarity and stifle the human response in us. It feeds us with a xenophobic ideology, dehumanising people from other places on Earth while at the same time it appeals to our selfishness, frightening the society with an economic catastrophe for which capitalism is in fact responsible.

Only together can we oppose it.

No borders!

No one is illegal!