Poland’s plans to temporarily suspend asylum rights are based on the assumption that neighboring Belarus wants to push a large number of migrants to the country’s shared border, Deputy Interior Minister Maciej Duszczyk said.
“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 preparing a “hot border and migration crisis” by planning to forcibly push hundreds of people to the EU’s 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. Further details are expected after 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 areas to the EU’s external border to put pressure on the West.
Despite the construction of a 5.5 meter 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 registered almost 28,000 such attempts.
