The Polish liberal government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk wants to abandon the human right to seek asylum. The decision, announced at a party congress in October, is officially meant as a temporarily legal rule that is already very much exercised in practice at the border with Belarus.
The right to seek asylum is a foundation law set by the European Union, to prevent member states of using migrants as a political weapon. Under certain conditions, countries are allowed to deviate from this rule, if the EU officially gives the green light.
Forced across the border
Already under the former right government, Poland started to push back immigrants across its eastern border. It accused Belarus and Russia of using migrants in an attempt to destabilize the Polish nation. E.g. Belarus picked up Syrian and Lebanese refugees by aeroplane and forced them across the borders with Poland and Lithuania, after the EU announced sanctions against the pro-Russian regime in Minsk.
Like Lithuania, Poland has built a border fence, and rotating military units support the Polish Border Guards with daily patrols. One soldier was stabbed to death by a person that crossed the border in the beginning of June, leading to widespread outcry. On the other hand, human rights advocates and ordinary people have been criticizing the inhuman way asylum seekers at the Belarusian-Polish border are dealt with by the Polish authorities.
Ukrainian refugees
Succeeding Polish governments have been relatively strict on migration from non-Western nations, but welcomed Ukrainian refugees with open arms ever since the start of the Russian take-over of the Crimea Peninsula and the incursions in Eastern Ukraine in 2014. | © 2024 Marcel Burger, nordicreporter.com. Featured photo: A Polish border (Archive photo by Radosław Drożdżewski (CC))