Poland plans to suspend the right to asylum because “Putin, Lukashenko and the mafias use it illicitly”

Poland plans temporarily suspend the right to asylum as part of a strategy to limit illegal migration in the midst of tensions with Belaruswhich Warsaw accuses of funneling migrants across its border.

Tusk has claimed that the right of asylum was being used by Belarusian President Alexander LukashenkoRussian President Vladimir Putin and by human traffickers in a way that goes against the essence of the right to asylum.

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

“I will demand this, I will demand recognition in Europe for this decision“, he stated at a conference held by his liberal Civic coalition (KO), the main party in Poland’s government coalition.

Migration has been in the agenda in Poland from 2021when large numbers of people, mainly from the Middle East and Africa, began attempting to illegally cross the border into Belarus in what Warsaw and the European Union said was a crisis orchestrated by Minsk and its ally Russia.

Immigration strategy plan

Tusk said he would present the immigration strategy at a government meeting October 15the first anniversary of the elections that brought the leading coalition to power.

Since taking office in December 2023Tusk has pursued a tough policy toward migration, a strategy that has won widespread public support but has disappointed activists who hoped he would abandon the approach of the previous nationalist administration.

“It violates the Constitution”

Marysia Zlonkiewicz of Grupa Granica, a NGO that helps migrants at the borderstated that suspending the right to asylum goes against the constitution and will push migrants into the hands of human traffickers.

“Prime Minister Tusk He is violating the Constitution he promised to defend… You cannot selectively exclude or deprive people of constitutional rights,” he said.