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Exhausted, freezing and exposed to the elements, Bayar Awat, his wife and infant daughter have been stuck on the Belarusian side of the Polish border for more than a week after leaving their homes in a desperate gambit to reach the European Union.
One of several thousand migrants from Iraq’s Kurdistan region at the Belarus border, Mr. Awat said that he knew Belarus was using migrants like him and his family as pawns in its own political battles, but that he was determined not to return to Iraq. He and others like him are hoping instead that the European Union will strike a deal for Poland to admit them.
“We became like a chicken in a cage in the hands of Belarusian and Polish police,” he said in a telephone interview, as children cried in the background. “One of them won’t let us go back to Minsk and the other won’t let us in. Belarus is playing with us any way they want.”