Poland to temporarily suspend asylum rights amid Belarus border disputes | Immigration News

The move is aimed at curbing the border crisis that Warsaw says is orchestrated by Minsk and its Russian partner.

Poland is set to temporarily suspend the right to asylum as part of a wider strategy aimed at reducing irregular migration, driven by growing tensions with Belarus.

The Polish government accuses Belarus of facilitating the flow of migrants across their shared border.

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

“I will demand this, I will demand recognition in Europe for this decision,” he told a conference held by his liberal Civic Coalition (KO), the largest member of Poland’s coalition government.

Tusk said that the right to asylum is being used by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, Russian President Vladimir Putin and human traffickers in a way that goes against the essence of the right to asylum.

Migration has been high on the agenda in Poland since 2021, when the border crisis led to thousands of asylum seekers, mainly from Afghanistan, Syria, and the Kurdish region of Iraq, trying to enter Poland through Belarus.

Warsaw and the European Union say it is a problem orchestrated by Minsk and its Russian counterpart.

Belarusian authorities, especially through tourism organizations in the Middle East, have encouraged travel to Belarus while people smugglers lead refugees and migrants to believe they can easily enter the European Union.

Thousands of people were given tourist visas to fly to Minsk and then head for the border with Poland.

Russia and Belarus have denied responsibility.

Tusk said he will present the migration strategy at the government meeting on October 15, which is the first celebration of the election that brought the coalition he leads.

Anti-immigrant rhetoric

Since taking office in December 2023, Tusk has pursued tough policies on migration.

The strategy has won broad public support, but has disappointed activists who had hoped he would abandon the previous, nationalist style of governance.

Marysia Zlonkiewicz of Grupa Granica, an independent organization that helps migrants at the border, said that suspending the right to asylum is unconstitutional and will force migrants into the hands of people smugglers.

“Prime Minister Tusk is violating the constitution that he promised to protect … you cannot opt ​​out or take away people’s constitutional rights,” he told Reuters news agency.

Poland has been accused of “pushing” non-European refugees and migrants into its country through the “red zone” – a 3-kilometer-wide (two-mile) line that runs along the roughly 400km (249-mile) border with Belarus.

Al Jazeera spoke to migrants and refugees at the border in 2021 and 2022 who said they had been pushed back to the border with Belarus by Polish border guards.

The red zone was first introduced in 2021 but was closed in 2022 after Poland started building a steel border wall.

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