Poland’s plans to temporarily suspend the right to asylum are based on the assumption that neighbouring Belarus is seeking to push a large number of migrants towards the country’s shared border, deputy Interior Minister Maciej Duszczyk says.
“The information we have about various scenarios being developed in Belarus and Russia justifies such a safety valve,” Duszczyk told broadcaster TVN24 on Tuesday.
Belarus was working on a “hot border and migration crisis,” by planning to violently force hundreds of people towards the EU external border to destabilize the situation in Poland, he said.
It comes after Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk on Saturday announced his country’s plans to temporarily suspend the right to asylum, with further details expected following a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday.
Poland and the EU have accused Russian President Vladimir Putin and his ally, Belarusian strongman Alexander Lukashenko, of pushing migrants from crisis regions to the EU’s external border in order to put pressure on the West.
Despite the construction of a 5.5-metre-high fence and an electronic surveillance system along the Polish border, migrants still try to cross the border illegally every day. Since the beginning of the year, Polish border guards have already registered almost 28,000 such attempts.
