Mere steps from the EU, hundreds of migrants remain stranded in Belarusian warehouse

For four days, 23-year-old Lava Azad thought her family was on the edge of starting a new life in the European Union. 

After sleeping in the expansive Białowieża Forest, which straddles Belarus and Poland, for more than a week, she along with her husband and son managed to cross into Poland.

She says the family from Iraq spent four more nights sleeping in the frigid temperatures before Polish police found them and drove them 12 kilometres back to Belarus. 

Now Azad, along with roughly 1,000 others, is living in a warehouse designed to store mail and packages. It is located in the town of Bruzgi, just a few hundred metres from the heavily fortified border that migrants have spent months desperately trying to cross. 

"We want to make life good for our children," said Azad to a CBC crew that was given access to the warehouse by Belarusian authorities, who have been accused by their EU neighbours of manufacturing the migrant crisis as retribution for sanctions. 

In mid-November, around 2,000 migrants were moved into the warehouse facility as temperatures dropped and tensions rose at the section of border between Belarus and Poland.

Since then, hundreds have flown back to Syria and Iraq. Many chose to board government-chartered flights, while others were deported from Belarus.

While CBC was given permission to film inside the warehouse, border restrictions in Russia meant that if the bureau's Canadian employees left the country, they would not be able to return. So CBC sent its Moscow cameraman/editor Dmitry Kozlov and its translator/assistant Irina Vesselova to visit the centre and speak with migrants. 

Inside, most have set up pallets and cardboard to try to carve out a sleeping space either under or on top of shelves. Laundry that had been washed by hand in the freezing cold outside was hung up throughout the cavernous indoor space. 

Azad, whose family was sleeping in a tent on the warehouse floor, has been in Belarus for three months. She said they came here because someone told them it would be an easy route to get to Germany.

They bought plane tickets and flew from their home in Iraqi Kurdistan to Dubai and then transferred on a plane bound for Minsk, Belarus. They paid someone to drive them to the Polish border, and had hoped to pay another driver in Poland to take them to Germany. 

After being returned to Belarus by Polish officers, they are now at the warehouse, fearing they could be forced to leave the country.

Very few of the migrants in the centre were able to speak English, but most who were approached by CBC were able to communicate a few simple words, such as "No deport" and "Germany."

There are reports that many of the migrants sold their belongings back in their home countries in order to pay the thousands of dollars needed for plane tickets and transportation.