Getty ImagesPolish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has announced plans to temporarily suspend asylum rights as part of a new immigration strategy to combat irregular migration.
Speaking at a meeting of the center-right Civic Alliance political group in Warsaw, Tusk said human traffickers were abusing asylum rights with help from Belarus and Russia.
Since 2021, the number of people entering Poland illegally from Belarus has increased significantly, mainly from the Middle East, Africa and Asia.
Warsaw accuses Belarus and Russia of waging a “hybrid war” to destabilize the bloc by steering the flow of migrants towards the bloc. Both countries deny this.
When the migration crisis began in August 2021, eight times as many people attempted to cross the border illegally in that month alone as in all of 2020.
Tusk said he would propose a new immigration policy at a government meeting on October 15.
“One of the elements of the migration strategy will be the temporary suspension of asylum rights in the territories,” the Prime Minister said. “I will ask for this, I will ask Europe to recognize this decision,” he added.
Under international law, states are obliged to provide people with the right to seek asylum. Tusk did not say how he would justify the move to EU partners.
He said: “We know very well how Lukashenko, Putin… human traffickers, human traffickers use this right, how they use this right to asylum to violate the essence of the right to asylum.” “Poland must take back the 100% restriction on who comes to Poland. % control,” he added.
Many immigrants arriving from Belarus did not stay but entered Germany. The trend prompted Berlin to impose checks on its border with Poland.
Tusk’s pro-EU coalition government surprised many by continuing the hard-line immigration policies implemented by the previous right-wing Law and Justice government, which authorized a counterattack and built a 5.5-meter-high steel fence along 186 kilometers (115 miles) of the border. .
ReutersDespite its tough stance on immigration from Middle Eastern and Asian countries, the Law and Justice-led government issued the highest number of annual residence and work permits in the entire EU for much of its time in power.
Tusk’s coalition continued its counterattack policy and re-established no-go areas along parts of the border. The government pushed for parliament to pass it after a 21-year-old soldier was stabbed to death by migrants at the border in July. Decriminalizing use of firearms by security forces Self-defense in certain situations.
Opinion polls show that most people support hardliners, with 86% of respondents supporting the use of weapons by security services in self-defense.
Indeed, Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski cited Citizens United’s hard-line immigration policies as a key factor in the success of last October’s elections.
“If we had not outflanked the then right-wing ruling party on immigration, if we had not convinced voters that we would be as tough as the previous government in protecting Poland’s borders, I don’t think we would have won. Yes, so we solved the problem, “Mr. Sikorski told an audience at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University in Washington in September.
But human rights groups have expressed concerns about the new government’s immigration policies. NGOs estimate that more than 130 migrants have died on both sides of Belarus’ borders with Poland, Lithuania and Latvia since the crisis began.
Malgorzata Szuleka, a board member of the Warsaw-based Helsinki Human Rights Foundation, told the BBC: “I have never considered Donald Tusk a human rights defender, but this is a new low.”
“There is a humanitarian crisis at the border, but it is also an open route for migration. We need to find a place for rational discussion that is not so driven by populism,” she added.
