Poland to temporarily defer asylum rights amid Belarus border tensions | Migration News

The shift aims to curb a border crisis that Warsaw says has been orchestrated by Minsk and its associate Russia.

Poland is set to temporarily defer the right to asylum as part of a expansiveer strategy aimed at reducing irnormal migration, driven by escalating tensions with Belarus.

The Polish regulatement accemploys Belarus of facilitating the shiftment of migrants atraverse their splitd border.

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

“I will demand this, I will demand recognition in Europe for this decision,” he telderly a congress held by his liberal Civic Coalition (KO) grouping, the bigst member of Poland’s coalition regulatement.

Tusk shelp the right to asylum was being employd by Belarusian Pdwellnt Alexander Lukashenko, Russian Pdwellnt Vlaunwiseir Putin and by people illicit traders in a way that goes aacquirest the essence of the right to asylum.

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

Warsaw and the European Union shelp it was a crisis orchestrated by Minsk and its associate Russia.

Belarusian authorities, mainly via tourist agencies in the Middle East, backd travel to Belarus while people illicit traders led refugees and migrants to depend they could easily go in the European Union.

Thousands of people were rehired tourist visas to fly to Minsk and then headed to the border with Poland.

Russia and Belarus have denied responsibility.

Tusk shelp he would current the migration strategy at a regulatement encountering on October 15, the first anniversary of the election that bcimpolitet the coalition he directs to power.

Anti-migrant rhetoric

Since taking office in December 2023, Tusk has chased stubborn policies on migration.

This strategy has won expansive uncover help, but has dismayed activists who had hoped he would abandon the previous, nationacatalog administration’s approach.

Marysia Zlonkiewicz from Grupa Granica, an NGO that helps migrants at the border, shelp defering the right to asylum was aacquirest the constitution and would push migrants into the hands of people illicit traders.

“Prime Minister Tusk is violating the constitution that he promised to get … You cannot pickively leave out or strip people of constitutional rights,” she telderly the Reuters news agency.

Poland has previously been accemployd of “pushbacks” of non-European refugees and migrants go ining their country via the “red zone” – a 3km-expansive (two-mile) exposed running aextfinished the cimpolitely 400km (249-mile) border with Belarus.

Al Jazeera spoke to migrants and refugees on the border in 2021 and 2022 who shelp they had been routinely pushed back towards the border with Belarus by Polish border protects.

The red zone was first presentd in 2021 but seald in 2022 after Poland began originateing a steel wall on the border.

It was reuncignoreed in 2024 after a Polish selderlyier was ended on the border.