About 100 demonstrators gathered outside the Bialystok courthouse in northern Poland on a recent April morning to show support for five Poles on trial. Four of the five appeared for the trial, and the fifth failed to show.

Demonstrators held up signs reading "Freedom for the five," "Helping is not a crime," or "Laws can't smother the truth." A group of drum-banging young people approached. Others yelled words of encouragement to the defendants, shouting, "You'll never walk alone!" Cheers erupted when the four appeared in court.

In March 2022, the five gave water, food and clothing to a desperate Iraqi couple, their seven children and an elderly Egyptian man who was with them. The refugees had illegally crossed the Belarus-Polish border and spent several days living in the woods. The five Poles then decided to drive the group to the next closest town around 13 kilometers (8 miles) away, but border patrol agents stopped them before they could get there.

Among those who appeared for questioning before the court on April 14 were the border patrol agents who discovered the refugees in the activists' vehicle. "Suddenly," said one, "I saw the back seat move. There were people hidden under the blankets that were stacked on it."

Prosecutors in Hajnowka demanded the activists, now known as the "Hajnowka Five" (#H5), be jailed immediately, but a court rejected the plea. Now, after months of hearings and witness testimony, the five have been formally charged.

They are accused of providing "illegal assistance" to refugees, "making it easier for them to stay in the Republic of Poland" by "providing food and clothing to them while they were hiding in the woods, giving them shelter and rest and transporting them into Poland on March 22, 2022."

Crisis at the Belarus-Poland border

One of those on trial is Ewa Moroz-Keczynska, an ethnologist who leads the educational department at the Bialowieza National Park near the border.

"We locals are in the woods a lot. It's where we work and relax," she told DW. In 2021, something terrible happened. Our forest started to move. Suddenly, it was full of people. We met people who were suffering from malnutrition, dehydration or other ailments, some even seemed to have hidden themselves to die in peace."

Moroz-Keczynska said it's difficult to go back to living a normal life once you have seen such images.

"I went into the woods with a backpack and started helping people. It's not something you really want to do. There should be organizations or state institutions to do that. It mostly falls to the young activists who come here to help and then have to suffer this trauma. As a local I had no choice. I had to do what I have always taught my students and my children."

Illegal crossings of Belarus and Poland's shared 418-kilometer (2260-mile) border jumped dramatically in the fall of 2021. Those crossing were people from the Middle East, Africa and Asia who had been invited to come to Belarus on tourist visas before being bused directly to the Polish border, often by Belarus soldiers. The route is one of the most popular into Europe but also one of the most treacherous.

'We are not talking about human trafficking'

Lawyer Hanna Machinska of the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights is one of the many human rights and legal experts watching what she called "a shameful trial" and an assault on those seeking to help.

Machinska said authorities should incorporate people who want to help into their own ranks, letting them work with state institutions such as border patrol agencies, rather than prosecuting them.

"These people have experience. They know how to help. If it wasn't for them, the death toll at the border would be far higher than the 58 recorded so far," she told DW.

Moreover, she said the charges are an absurdly skewed interpretation of the law. The legal basis for the suit (paragraph 264.1 of the Polish legal code) was actually designed to prosecute those who help illegals reside in Poland "for financial or personal gain." The penalty for a guilty verdict can be up to five years in prison.

The law targets human traffickers, but now prosecutors are arguing that the gist of the law is to clamp down on "advantages gained by refugees."

Machinska rejects that argument. "We are not talking about human trafficking here. We are talking about humanitarian assistance. It's a refusal to provide such assistance that should be a crime," she said.

Tough migration policy from a liberal government

The next court appearance for the defendants is scheduled for May 14, exactly four days before a presidential election featuring right-wing and extreme-right candidates.

The trial has also put the restrictive migration policies of center-right Prime Minister Donald Tusk and his administration under the spotlight. Many of those who voted for his coalition are deeply disappointed that Tusk's migration policies are even harsher than those of the previous right-wing nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) government.

In early March, for instance, Tusk suspended the right to request asylum at the Belarus-Poland border, citing his belief that refugees there were being used as yet another component in a Russian-led hybrid war against Europe. Polish border agents have been regularly accused of not allowing people to make use of their internationally recognized right to request asylum. Human rights advocates see the suspension of asylum rights as an attempt to legalize so-called pushbacks.

Justice Minister Adam Bodnar, who also serves as Poland's attorney general, has also raised eyebrows for refusing to drop charges against the Hajnowka Five, despite numerous appeals to do so and the fact that the investigation began under the previous Law and Justice government.

This article was originally written in German.

Correction, April 18, 2025: An earlier version of this article incorrectly spelled the name of Hanna Machinska. DW apologizes for the error.