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21-07-2025
WARSAW: Anti‑immigration protests have taken place in dozens of towns and cities across Poland.
Most demonstrations attracted several hundred people or fewer on Saturday but police estimated that about 3,000 took part in the largest rally in the southern city of Katowice.
The protests were organized by far-right political group Konfederacja and another nationalist organization.
Politicians from Konfederacja and the opposition Law and Justice Party have been warning about a flood of illegal migration in Poland but official figures do not support their claims.
“Without closing Poland to illegal immigration, without starting deportation campaigns, without abandoning political correctness… security will gradually deteriorate,” Konfederacja co-chairman Krzysztof Bosak told the crowd in the eastern city of Bialystok.
A minute’s silence was held at some gatherings in memory of a 24-year-old Polish woman murdered in the central city of Torun.
In the capital Warsaw, rival rallies took place just metres away. There were no reports of violence.
Police have since arrested a Venezuelan man in the case.
Right-wing politicians claim Poland is in danger of being flooded by illegal migrants.
Immigration has increased over the last decade but official figures show that migration is lower so far this year than in previous years.
Earlier this month, Poland introduced checks on its borders with Germany and Lithuania after Berlin began turning away asylum seekers. Germany introduced its own controls on the Polish and Czech borders in 2023.
In March, Poland temporarily suspended the right of migrants arriving in the country via its border with Belarus to apply for asylum.
In March, Poland has temporarily suspended the right of migrants arriving in Poland via its border with Belarus to apply for asylum.
Prime Minister Donald Tusk announced it would be happening after the controversial bill, which will allow Polish authorities to suspend this right for up to 60 days at a time, was signed into law by President Andrzej Duda.
Tusk had said it would be adopted “without a moment’s delay” while Duda said the changes were needed to strengthen security on the country’s borders but the law has been criticized by rights groups including Human Rights Watch, which said the EU should take legal action against Poland if it was implemented.
The group urged the country’s parliament last month to reject the bill, saying it “flies in the face of Poland’s international and EU obligations” and could “effectively completely seal off the Poland-Belarus border, where Polish authorities already engage in unlawful and abusive pushbacks”.
The government said previously the suspension would only be applied temporarily to people who pose a threat to state security, for example “large groups of aggressive migrants trying to storm the border”.
Exemptions will be made for unaccompanied minors, pregnant women; the elderly or unwell, anyone exposed to “real risk of serious harm” by being returned and citizens of countries accused of conducting the instrumentalization of migration like Belarus
Tusk has dismissed criticism from human rights groups.
“Nobody is talking about violating human rights, the right to asylum, we are talking about not granting applications to people who illegally cross the border in groups organized by Lukashenko,” he said in October. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
