BSS :
Exhausted and trapped in a cold, “cruel” forest, Lebanese barber Ali Abd Alwareth said that he had regretted his week-long bid to enter the European Union via the Belarus-Poland border.
“It’s miserable. Something that you don’t wish for your worst enemy… A nightmare,” the soft-spoken 24-year-old with Crohn’s disease told AFP. Sitting cross-legged on a bed of pine needles and dead leaves near the border town of Kleszczele in eastern Poland, Abd Alwareth described being a ping-pong ball for the guards.
“I tried crossing like five, six times, and every time I got caught and deported back to the border” by Poland, he said in English. he Belarusian side meanwhile refused to let him return to Minsk to fly home. Abd Alwareth said security forces told him: “You have only two choices: either you die here or you die in Poland. That’s it.”
One of thousands of migrants-mostly from the Middle East-who have tried to penetrate the 400-kilometre (250-mile) border since August, Abd Alwareth said he left the financial crisis in Lebanon in search of a better life.The whole journey from his home region of Bekaa cost $4,000 and involved help from a Minsk-based company he found on social media.
The EU suspects Belarus is masterminding the unprecedented influx of migrants into Poland as a form of retaliation against EU sanctions, but the regime has put the blame on the West.
