On freezing Poland-Belarus border, migrants cry for help
The man’s voice, carried over a faint phone line from the depths of Europe’s oldest forest, was tinged with desperation.
“We’ve been 10 days without food or water,” says Mahmoud Naaous, urgently. “We have no tent or anything else, just our clothes. We are going to die.”
Mr. Naaous, a Syrian delivery driver who fled Lebanon, had hoped to find refuge in Europe. Now he finds himself stranded on the border between Belarus and Poland in the freezing cold, along with several thousand other migrants.
As tensions between Belarus and the European Union mount over their future, these migrants, scattered through the primeval Bialowiesza forest that straddles the border, have struggled to make their voices heard. Journalists and humanitarian workers have been barred from the
