Mariam Soumah, a 23-year-old mother from Guinea, has been separated from her infant daughter Sabina for nine months after being deported from Belarus without her child.
Soumah is now in Guinea, while Sabina remains in a Minsk orphanage.
The young mother traveled to Belarus on a student visa, hoping to eventually reach the European Union.
But her plans unraveled after she fell pregnant and went into labor more than two months early.
Sabina was born weighing just 600 grams and required intensive care, which Belarusian doctors provided.
Soumah says she was soon told she could only see her daughter if she paid medical bills totaling around $33,000.
When she could not pay, access was restricted. She was later jailed for violating immigration rules and forcibly deported to Guinea in August 2025, leaving her daughter behind.
“I begged them not to do it. I said I would go home only with my baby,” Soumah told AFP from Conakry.
“They said no.” Since then, she has only been allowed two brief video calls with Sabina.
Human rights groups and UN experts have condemned the separation as “extremely concerning.”
The Guinean embassy in Moscow, which covers Belarus, has said it is monitoring the case and is seeking clarifications.
UNICEF Belarus has acknowledged awareness of the situation but cannot comment on individual cases.
Soumah recounted her ordeal, describing how she struggled to find her newborn in hospitals across Minsk, only to be blocked from seeing her unless she paid.
She was eventually informed that Sabina would be sent to an orphanage, despite there being no official legal decision stripping her of parental rights.
Enira Bronitskaya of Human Constanta, a migrant rights group, criticized the authorities for what she called a “manipulative” and heavy-handed response, stressing that threatening a mother with the loss of her child is illegal.
“I have nothing, not even my child,” Soumah said, tearfully, recalling her deportation via Istanbul.
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