A Guinean mother is living through a nightmare after being forcibly deported from Belarus without her newborn baby girl. Mariam Soumah, 23, has not seen her daughter, Sabina, for nine months, with the infant stuck in a Minsk orphanage against her mother's will.
A Mother's Plea Ignored
Mariam Soumah's ordeal began when she travelled from Guinea to Belarus, hoping to eventually reach the European Union to escape poverty. Like many migrants, she was lured online to the authoritarian state on a student visa. Her situation became critical when she gave birth prematurely in November 2024. Her daughter, Sabina, weighed just 600 grams at birth and was saved by Belarusian doctors in intensive care.
However, shortly after the birth, Soumah's troubles multiplied. She was presented with a staggering medical bill of around $33,000 and was blocked from seeing Sabina unless she paid. "I begged them not to do it," Soumah told AFP during an interview in the slums of Conakry, Guinea's capital. She described swiping through photos on her phone of Sabina, who turned one in November, wearing a red dress.
Forced Separation and Deportation
The situation escalated when immigration authorities detained Soumah for breaking migration rules. Despite her pleas, she was imprisoned and later, in August 2025, handcuffed and put on a flight to Istanbul. "I said I will only go back with my baby. I begged them, please, just let my baby recover and I will go home with her," Soumah recounted. "They said no."
Since her deportation, Soumah has only been allowed two short video calls to see Sabina, who remains in a state orphanage in Minsk. The exiled rights group Human Constanta, which monitors migrant rights in Belarus, has condemned the actions. Enira Bronitskaya of the group called the process "manipulative," stating, "They simply did not care and separated the mother and child." She emphasized that threatening to withhold the child was illegal, as there was no official ruling to strip Soumah of her parental rights.
International Condemnation and Ongoing Struggle
The case has drawn sharp criticism from UN experts, rights groups, and Guinean diplomats. UN experts called reports of the forced separation "extremely concerning." The Guinean embassy in Moscow, which oversees Belarus, told AFP it was following the case with "great humanitarian concern" and had demanded clarifications from Belarusian authorities.
The embassy noted that UNICEF Belarus is aware of the situation and could help organise "humanitarian support" for the child, though UNICEF itself declined to comment on individual cases. Belarusian authorities did not respond to AFP's request for comment on the matter.
For Mariam Soumah, the pain is constant. Recalling the moment in the hospital last summer when a woman told her Sabina was being sent to an orphanage, she said, "I said: what? What orphanage?" Soumah, who is herself an orphan, now spends her days in Guinea, separated from her daughter by thousands of miles, with no clear path to reunion.
