Keypoints:
- Guinean mother says she was deported from Belarus without her baby
- Premature child remains in a Minsk orphanage months later
- UN experts and Guinean diplomats express humanitarian concern
A 23-YEAR-OLD Guinean woman says she has not seen her baby daughter for nine months after being forcibly deported from Belarus without the child, a case that has drawn condemnation from United Nations experts, rights groups and Guinean diplomats.
Mariam Soumah told AFP that her daughter Sabina, born prematurely in November 2024, is being kept in an orphanage in the Belarusian capital Minsk while she remains stranded in Guinea. Soumah says the separation was carried out against her will after she was detained for immigration violations.
The case has become emblematic of growing concerns around migrant treatment in Belarus, where authorities are accused of exploiting irregular migration routes while failing to safeguard the rights of vulnerable mothers and children.
‘I begged them not to do it,’ Soumah said during an interview in the slums of Conakry, scrolling through photos of Sabina on her phone. ‘I said I would only go back with my baby.’
A perilous migration gamble
Soumah said she travelled across Africa to Belarus in a bid to escape poverty, hoping the country would offer a land route into the European Union. The path has grown increasingly common in recent years, with the EU accusing the government of President Alexander Lukashenko of facilitating irregular migration to exert political pressure on the bloc.
Like many others, Soumah said she was recruited online and arrived in Belarus on a student visa. ‘I didn’t want to go to Europe by sea,’ she said. ‘I looked at the map and saw Belarus was surrounded by Schengen countries.’
Her situation unravelled when she attempted to renew her visa while pregnant. The child’s father, also Guinean, had left earlier to try to reach the EU, she said.
Born at 600 grams
Soumah went into labour more than two months early. Sabina was born weighing just 600 grams and was rushed to intensive care. Doctors managed to save the baby, but Soumah says her access to her daughter was soon restricted.
She told AFP that hospital staff demanded she pay substantial medical bills before allowing visits, even as she recovered from an emergency caesarean section. After weeks of uncertainty, she eventually located the hospital where Sabina had been transferred and began visiting daily.
That changed again when the baby was discharged from intensive care. Soumah said she was presented with a bill of around $33,000 and subsequently barred from seeing her daughter. ‘I kept coming and they kept saying she was sleeping,’ she recalled.
‘What orphanage?’
Soumah said she was later informed that Sabina was being sent to an orphanage, a moment she described as devastating. ‘I said: what orphanage?’ said Soumah, herself an orphan.
At the same time, immigration authorities increased pressure on her to leave the country. Her attempts to enrol in further studies for a new visa were rejected, and in July she was jailed for breaching migration rules — an administrative offence, according to rights group Human Constanta.
‘They simply did not care and separated the mother and child,’ said Enira Bronitskaya of Human Constanta, calling the process ‘manipulative’ and unlawful.
Forced removal
Soumah said officials tried to persuade her to find relatives to pay for a ticket home. When no funds materialised, she was handcuffed, taken to the airport and placed on a flight to Istanbul in August, without her baby.
UN experts have since described the reported forced separation as ‘extremely concerning’. The Guinean embassy in Moscow, which oversees relations with Belarus, told AFP it was following the case with ‘great humanitarian concern’ and had requested clarifications from Belarusian authorities.
UNICEF Belarus has been made aware of the case, the embassy said, though the agency declined to comment on individual situations. Belarusian authorities did not respond to AFP’s request for comment.
Since her deportation, Soumah says she has been allowed only two brief video calls with Sabina. ‘From morning to night, I think about her,’ she said. ‘I came home with nothing — not even my child.’
