What is not allowed to be photographed at the border? Border guards continue to make things difficult for journalists

Border guards and the Polish Army continue to make it difficult to report on the situation on the Polish-Belarusian border. Two journalists from Germany have just found out.

In February of this year, Laszlo and Marshl, freelancers from Germany who prefer not to give their names, came to Podlasie to collect material for a report on the humanitarian crisis that has been going on at the border for almost three years.

As reported by NGOs operating there, the situation has not changed for the better after the Coalition took power on October 15. Pushbacks continue, and people on the road continue to fall victim to violence, including at the hands of Polish uniformed services. The Border Group recently reported that Podlasie border guards have admitted to so-called “”border crimes”. of as many as 325 people being hauled back to the border line between December 13 and March 4, that is, already under the Donald Tusk government.

The current situation on the border has also been addressed recently by Agnieszka Holland, director of the award-winning film Green Border . At the Eagles gala, while accepting the award for lifetime achievement and best film, which was Green Border, she said:

“On this border we told, things are still happening that shouldn’t be happening. I know: geopolitics, big issues, border security – but I also know that the moment border guards continue to torture people and show them contempt, there is no victory for democracy and humanity.”

Under the previous government, we sometimes heard about the intimidation of humanitarian workers at the border and the criminalization of humanitarian aid. But as Laszlo and Marshl’s experience shows, uniformed officers are still eager to take advantage of the ignorance and fear of people who want to document what is happening on the border.

They wanted to intimidate us

– We walked from Bialowieza along the border dam. At one point we spotted makeshift shelters, covered with blue plastic sheeting, where soldiers guarding the border with Belarus are stationed. We didn’t get too close – we kept our distance approx. 15 meters from the dam.

– We started taking pictures, without the soldiers’ faces. We are sure that there were no signs anywhere prohibiting photography ,” Laszlo and Marshl recount.

The incident occurred on February 7 at around 4 pm.

As the journalists emerged from the forest, two cars appeared on the road, surrounding them from the front and rear. Four border guards and a soldier got out of the vehicles. Only one Border Guard officer, they assure me, spoke English.

– The soldier was furious. He had a long gun with him. Admittedly, he did not aim at us, but he kept his finger on the trigger ,” they go on to say.

During the detention, the soldier began shouting: “We know you took pictures. You should show your cameras!” The journalists countered that they were under no such obligation. But the uniformed officers pressed on.

– They said that if we don’t do it, we will have big problems. They also tried to argue that, after all, they don’t come to our house and take pictures of, for example, our flowers.

With each passing minute, the uniformed officers became more and more aggressive. – They took our documents to the car, and again argued about the photos. We finally gave in and showed them the camera. One photo showed an empty vodka bottle against a border wall. Then they got angry. The soldier began shouting that we should remove them immediately.

The officers argued that journalists had no right to photograph border infrastructure. – But after all, the only things visible in the photos were concertina wire, a fence and a shack. There were no camera poles or even soldiers’ faces in the photos , they report.

– They wanted to intimidate us, that’s for sure. They started asking us where we were from and where we were spending the night. We didn’t want to answer these questions, but they were getting more and more aggressive, and we had no reception on our phones. We began to fear that they might confiscate our equipment. Eventually we removed the photos, and they let us go.

From that day, journalists managed to preserve only the photographs they had on their analog camera.

This was Laszlo and Marshl’s first day in Podlasie. For the next seven days, the journalists were regularly stopped and legitimized by Border Guard officers.
– They probably wanted to make our work more difficult ,” they comment.

Only one day, when they were accompanied by a Border Group employee, the soldiers, despite appearing in their path, did not stop them or call the border service.

– Together with this person, we returned to the place where we were first stopped. We checked again that there was no ban on photography. Therefore, we are confident that we have not broken the law ,” they say.

When they returned to the site with a person from the Border Group, they took pictures a second time. This time no one legitimized them or made trouble for them.

What does the law say about this?

We asked Konrad Siemaszko, legal aid coordinator for journalists at the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, for his opinion on the matter.

– Forcing journalists to remove the footage raises very serious questions, and for several reasons , the lawyer comments. As he assures, there is currently no ban on photographing the border dam. Such a ban was in place during the period so-called. state of emergency on the Polish-Belarusian border – although the introduction of the ban there also raised questions of legality.

– Admittedly, new photography restrictions were introduced in August 2023, which include. facilities of particular importance to defense. However, we are only talking about facilities that have been marked with a special graphic sign ,” the expert explains, while pointing out that this sign should be clearly defined in a Ministry of Defense regulation, and such a regulation, so far, has not been adopted. This means that even if journalists were to take pictures of such objects on the section of the border dam, they would not break the law.

– What ‘s more, if such a ban were in place, I don’t see any legal basis for a Border Guard officer to order the removal of the photos anyway, “ he says, adding that forcing the deletion of photographs is a very strong interference with journalists’ rights to report on what happens at the border.

So we ask whether the whole situation can be called an attempt to intimidate journalists in the course of their work.

– It can even be considered in terms of overstepping the authority of border guards and the Polish Army. That is, we may be dealing with a situation in which a public official, exceeding his powers, acted to the detriment of public or private interests – and the events described here can be analyzed from this angle.

According to Siemaszko, one should also consider whether such actions fall under obstruction of press criticism, which is a crime under press law.

We have requested comment on the matter from the Ministry of Defense. We are waiting for a response.