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Local residents from Grupa Granica looking for missing four-year old Eileen on December 7, 2021. Photo: Fundacja Ocalenie Facebook
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The body of a man has been discovered in a forest in Poland close to the Belarusian border, Polish police announced on Wednesday as fears grow for a missing four-year old Iraqi child who has not been seen in the area since Monday night.
"The body was found in a forest near Olchowka in the Narewka commune yesterday," local police said on Twitter, adding that the man was found with a Nigerian passport.
Around a dozen migrants have been found dead along the border since thousands of people, drawing from Africa and the Middle East - including from the Kurdistan Region - began trying to enter Europe from Belarus in the summer, although the real figure could be far higher.
According to AFP, border guards have said a group of 35 migrants managed to force their way across the border earlier this week with the help of the Belarusian military. All were detained and sent back.
A four-year old child from Iraq has been missing on the Polish-Belarus border since Monday evening after being separated from her parents who were pushed back from Poland to Belarus near Nowy Dwór, the Polish charity Fundacja Ocalenie said in a statement on Tuesday.
According to the Ocalenie Foundation, the child called Eileen was wearing a red jacket when she was separated from her parents in the forest between Poland and Belarus during the pushback which also damaged her parents’ phones, restricting their ability to share images of her.
Activists from another Polish organisation, Grupan Granica, claim to have continued the search for the girl in freezing temperatures overnight with support from local residents.
The team of 14 NGOs, volunteers, activists, researchers and residents established as a response to the migrant crisis on the Polish-Belarus border, confirmed in a statement on Tuesday that, “We got a message last night from desperate parents, refugees from Iraq. Their 4-year-old daughter Eileen has gone missing on the border. She was last seen near Nowy Dwór, on the Polish side.”
“It was as a result of the actions of Polish Border Guard officers that a small child was separated from her parents, resulting in the disappearance of the girl and her life being endangered. We demand the Polish services to take immediate search actions, finding Eileen and holding people accountable who made the trips. If the situation concerns a Polish child, all search services would be involved,” the statement added.
Kalina Czwarnóg, Fundacja Ocalenie's press officer, told Rudaw English on Wednesday evening that several teams of activists and local people were continuing their search for Eileen, with no result.
"Polish border guards ended their search after several hours yesterday. They say that the baby is on Belarusian side of the border. They didn't include police in searching for the child. If this was a Polish baby the situation would look totally different," Czwarnóg said.
European countries have accused the Belarusian regime of engineering the migrant crisis in an attempt to pressure the EU, which has imposed sanctions over the regime's crackdown on political opposition and independent media.
Last week, the European Commission proposed emergency measures that would allow Poland, along with Latvia and Lithuania, to derogate from asylum protections, meaning expanded detention, border procedures, delays in registering asylum appeals, and reduced reception conditions for migrants attempting to cross their borders.
The British parliament continued to debate the Borders and Nationality Bill on Wednesday; proposed legislation which would criminalise those who enter the UK through irregular means or without pre-authorisation by imprisoning them. On Tuesday night, the British House of Commons voted to reject an amendment put forward by the Joint Committee on Human Rights to ensure that the maritime enforcement powers cannot be used in a manner that would endanger lives at sea.
In an opinion piece for the French newspaper Le Monde, published on Monday night, Kurdistan Prime Minister Masrour Barzani called on European countries and Belarus to uphold their obligations under international law towards Kurdish migrants in their countries, and promised to implement the necessary reforms in the Kurdistan Region to prevent people from feeling their only hopes lie abroad.
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