A one-year-old boy who died in the cold and hardship in the forest on the border between Belarus and Poland, after a month and a half spent with his Syrian parents in extreme conditions in the hope of arriving in Europe.
While diplomatic efforts are multiplied to overcome the crisis on the migratory route, the drama of the little migrant brings to the fore what is a real humanitarian tragedy.
"It is heartbreaking to see a child die of cold at the gates of Europe. The exploitation of migrants and asylum seekers must stop, inhumanity must stop", tweeted the president of the EU Parliament, David Sassoli.
A tragedy that emerged during the night, when the operators of the Polish Center for International Aid intervened in the cold after an emergency signal. In the forest they found a couple of wounded Syrians - he was injured in his arm, her leg was cut by a knife - and their lifeless son. They also looked after a dehydrated and undernourished young man on the spot.
So far the victims reported at the border by doctors and activists had been at least 11. But in these hours Minsk signals openness towards the EU request for a de-escalation. The Belarusian authorities reported that they had cleared the camp in the border area between the Belarusian village of Bruzgi and the Polish village of Kuznica, where about two thousand people had been camping in makeshift tents for days. The migrants, the Polish border guards confirmed, were transferred to a facility a few hundred meters away.
A first turning point after Merkel's pressing. Today the repatriation to Iraq of a first group of 431 migrants also arrived: "On a voluntary basis", the Kurdish-Iraqi authorities report.
According to Belarus, there are around 7,000 migrants on its territory. The regime now claims it wants to negotiate "humanitarian corridors to Germany" for two thousand of them, repatriating the others to the Middle East.
(Unioneonline / L)
