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28-03-2025
WARSAW: 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 and 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.
Since 2021, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Finland have seen a huge increase in the number of people crossing into their countries illegally from Belarus and Russia.
Polish authorities have sent thousands of troops and border guards to police its border with Belarus and built a 5.5-metre-high steel fence along 186 km of the frontier where at times several thousand migrants have been left stranded.
Rights groups estimate more than one hundred people have died on the borders between Belarus and Poland, Lithuania and Latvia since 2021.
EU eastern flank countries and the European Commission have accused the Belarusian and Russian authorities of weaponizing migration to create a new route into the EU to destabilize the bloc.
Last year, in response to a record number of asylum claims, Tusk announced a tough new migration strategy, including allowing the temporary and partial suspension of the right to claim asylum.
However, human rights groups have declared that the measures would violate not only international law but Poland’s own constitution. They also say they will cause real harm to vulnerable asylum seekers, who will face being pushed back over the border into Belarus.
Well over 100 people are believed to have died around the borders between Belarus and EU member states since the beginning of the crisis in 2021.
Poland’s government notes that the law makes exceptions for vulnerable people. Even when the asylum suspension is in place, Poland must still accept claims from minors, pregnant women, people who require special healthcare and those deemed at “real risk of harm” if returned over the border.
A last-minute amendment added to the bill by parliament also allows an entire group that includes minors such as a family to submit an asylum claim. In the original draft, only the minors would have been allowed to. (Int’l News Desk)
