Poland to quickly droop asylum rights amid Belarus border tensions | Migration Information


The travel goals to curb a border extremity that Warsaw says has been orchestrated by way of Minsk and its best friend Russia.

Poland is about to quickly droop the precise to asylum as a part of a broader technique aimed toward decreasing abnormal migration, pushed by way of escalating tensions with Belarus.

The Polish executive accuses Belarus of facilitating the motion of migrants throughout their shared border.

“One of the elements of the migration strategy will be the temporary territorial suspension of the right to asylum,” High Minister Donald Tusk mentioned on Saturday.

“I will demand this, I will demand recognition in Europe for this decision,” he advised a congress held by way of his broad Civic Coalition (KO) grouping, the biggest member of Poland’s coalition executive.

Tusk mentioned the precise to asylum was once being worn by way of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, Russian President Vladimir Putin and by way of crowd smugglers in some way that is going towards the essence of the precise to asylum.

Migration has been top at the time table in Poland since 2021, when a border extremity led to 1000’s of asylum seekers, principally from Afghanistan, Syria, and the Kurdish pocket of Iraq, making an attempt to go into Poland by means of Belarus.

Warsaw and the Eu Union mentioned it was once a extremity orchestrated by way of Minsk and its best friend Russia.

Belarusian government, principally by means of vacationer businesses within the Center East, promoted move to Belarus week crowd smugglers led refugees and migrants to imagine they may simply input the Eu Union.

1000’s of crowd had been issued vacationer visas to fly to Minsk and next headed to the border with Poland.

Russia and Belarus have denied accountability.

Tusk mentioned he would provide the migration technique at a central authority assembly on October 15, the primary yearly of the election that introduced the coalition he ends up in energy.

Donald Tusk in Lodz, Poland [File: Kacper Pempel/Reuters]

Anti-migrant rhetoric

Since taking workplace in December 2023, Tusk has pursued difficult insurance policies on migration.

This technique has received wide crowd assistance, however has dismayed activists who had was hoping he would vacate the former, nationalist management’s way.

Marysia Zlonkiewicz from Grupa Granica, an NGO that is helping migrants on the border, mentioned postponing the precise to asylum was once towards the charter and would push migrants into the arms of crowd smugglers.

“Prime Minister Tusk is violating the constitution that he promised to defend … You cannot selectively exclude or deprive people of constitutional rights,” she advised the Reuters information company.

A photo of Polish border guards in the dark.
Polish border guards, November 2021 [Morten Risberg/Al Jazeera]

Poland has in the past been accused of “pushbacks” of non-Eu refugees and migrants getting into their nation by means of the “red zone” – a 3km-wide (two-mile) strip operating alongside the kind of 400km (249-mile) border with Belarus.

Al Jazeera told to migrants and refugees at the border in 2021 and 2022 who mentioned that they had been automatically driven again against the border with Belarus by way of Polish border guards.

The pink zone was once first presented in 2021 however closed in 2022 upcoming Poland started development a metal wall at the border.

It was once reopened in 2024 upcoming a Polish soldier was once killed at the border.

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