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 political and diplomatic efforts are multiplied to overcome the crisis on the eastern route, with the evacuation of the camp at the border and a first flight of repatriation to Iraq, the tragic end of the little migrant brings the humanitarian tragedy back to the fore. "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.
The drama of the Syrian child emerged during the night, when the operators of the Polish Center for International Aid carried out an intervention in freezing temperatures following an emergency signal. In the forest, rescuers said they found a couple of injured Syrians - the man with an arm injury, the woman with a knife cut to the leg - and their now lifeless son. On the spot, adds the NGO, a young man in conditions of dehydration and malnutrition was also treated. So far, at least 11 victims have been reported at the border by doctors and activists.
But just in these hours from Minsk there are signs of 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 came after the pressing of the German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who twice this week heard from President Alexander Lukashenko, amidst criticism from Warsaw for fears of legitimization of the Minsk regime. After theintervention in Berlin today also came the repatriation to Iraq of a first group of 431 migrants with an Iraqi Airways flight that made a stopover first in Erbil, in Kurdistan from which most of them came, and then in Baghdad: a return which for the Kurdish-Iraqi authorities would have taken place on a voluntary basis.
Before the eviction, it had been another tense night at the border. The Warsaw Defense Ministry reported the arrest of another 200 migrants, accused of having entered the country illegally by exploiting the diversion created by a stone throwing at Polish border guards.
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, after yesterday announcing the opening of direct negotiations with the EU.
But Brussels promises to remain tough, confirming only technical talks, and assures that it wants the new sanctions package agreed on Monday at the Foreign Affairs Council to enter into force as soon as possible.