the plight of refugees in Poland

5.8.2007 Day 2 Smoszewo

Exhausted. Today we spent the entire day planning for the upcoming weeks. Well, actually we had an overview of the situation here at the refugee center—more correctly an asylum center, because the people here don’t have refugee status yet. So, the path goes like so—the people left Chechnya and Poland is the first country in the European Union (as in it is a designated refugee entrance point from, at least from the east). So they arrive at the border of Poland after a long and expensive journey—legally with a passport, or illegally smuggled, but in any case, an expensive one. At the border, they have their first interview, and request refugee status. They are then sent to the main refugee center in Warsaw, where they have a more extensive interview where they are asked to prove that they qualify as refugees—legally, that they have a well-founded fear of persecution because of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, and must be seeking shelter in another country. Most of the Chechens say they are fleeing because of the war, but really, that is not reason enough (at least not politically). They must then prove that they have a real fear for being persecuted because of their nationality, Chechen. To give you an idea oh how easy this is, a woman told that soldiers had raped her. She was not granted refugee status because, according to officials, rape does not qualify as persecution, but rather a criminal offense. What?!! So yea, 90% of the applicants will receive a negative response. Those who receive refugee status receive assistance for a year. The remaining 90% end up in two categories: tolerated status or negative. Tolerated status, or “Status B’ means that you can stay in the country and have permission to work, but nothing else, no assistance. The working becomes rather difficult in this case because you can’t get a job unless you have a home, and you can’t have a home if you have no job and money. Catch-22. The negative status is that you need to leave the country. However, there really isn’t a deportation process here in Poland. Many refugees, whether granted refugee status or not, want usually escape to other countries, because the opportunities are simply better in other European countries. Learning about the status of refugees and the process here in Poland is interesting, since it differs from the United States quite a bit.

So we had a meeting set up with the entire center this evening, but initially, only children showed up, which was disappointing. Well, since we will be working mostly with the kids, we introduced our plans and ourselves and then started in on some games with them. Slowly but surely, the adults started popping in—just couldn’t seem to resist. It was really fun to play things like fruit basket with them and teach these darling kids orange and apple. I think a few little girls have adopted me as their pet. Which is fine because they are teaching me all sorts of Chechen words—like “maima’ which means “monkey”. The foreign language part of my brain is switched on, and when I want to say something to them and I don’t know the word in Russian, Polish or Chechen (which is most of the time) it wants to come out in Spanish. Tomorrow we start with classes! Hooray! I’m a little nervous, because I am going to be the main teacher in the adult women’s class. I’ll start doing some of the photography stuff in a few days, after we get a feel for how our days will be going.

So we have this awesome Japanese guy in our group, Takashi. He has traveled around Russia and the Ukraine and Uzbekistan and everywhere, and is fluent in Russian. Well, Russia isn’t exactly the safest place in the world to travel, and turns out that he has been arrested for two weeks because the Russian officials thought that he was a Chinese drug runner and wouldn’t believe him when he tried to convince them that he wasn’t even Chinese, much less a drug runner. And then he was kidnapped by Russian skinheads (who are really dangerous and really prejudice). He told us this story of how he was in St. Petersburg and these three skinheads grabbed him and took him with them. At this point in time he was 19 and didn’t speak much Russian. They tried to get ransom for him from the Japanese embassy, but he wasn’t sure how much they asked for him. He spent three days at their house watching Russian TV, and then when they were asleep one night he escaped and hitchhiked to St. Petersburg. Scary story, really when you think about it, but, Takashi told it in such a matter of fact, undramatic way that it was really hilarious. You just had to be there to hear him saying, in his Japanese accent, “yeah I escaped from them and hitchhiked to St. Petersburg and that is when I was really afraid.” Hmm, for some reason it made us laugh a lot, but now it just sounds scary.

Anyways, time to sleep so we have energy to work with the kids tomorrow. We have this great neighbor names Aslan who brought us a TV so that we would have some entertainment. Everyone is so nice! A di quol! (Totally phonetic spelling for good-bye in Chechen).