Michael O’Flaherty, the Council of Europe’s commissioner for human rights, has reported Poland to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) for allegedly continuing “pushbacks” into Belarus of asylum seekers without considering asylum claims.
His report criticised what he said was the way Polish political leaders have portrayed migrants and refugees as “human weapons” used in a “hybrid war” as justification for failing to honour asylum rights.
O’Flaherty also criticised the Belarusian authorities for encouraging, helping and sometimes coercing people to cross the border with Poland, noting reports of “ill-treatment, sexual violence and other abuse by Belarusian state agents”.
That issue was brought to renewed attention in October after Poland’s Liberal government led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk approved a new migration strategy that would allow for the suspension of the right to claim asylum on the border with Belarus.
In his report, O’Flaherty said: “Poland’s practice of summary returns of persons to Belarus without an individual assessment continues to date … in some cases including persons who have formally requested asylum.”
That practice, informally known as “pushbacks”, has previously been questioned as a violation of human rights and international law by O’Flaherty’s predecessor, Dunja Mijatovic, and by the UN special rapporteur on the human rights of migrants.
O’Flaherty noted that official data obtained by human rights watchdogs showed that 7,317 people were “summarily returned to Belarus” by Poland between December 2023 and June 2024. That was more than the 6,000 recorded from July 2023 to mid-January 2024.
He stated that there have been cases of pushbacks not only among those who irregularly crossed the border from Belarus but also among people who had crossed at official border points. He acknowledged, though, that the claim had been denied by Poland’s border guard authority.
The commissioner also reported that “refugees, asylum seekers and migrants, reportedly continue to be stranded in the woods on the Poland-Belarus border” and that there had been 87 documented deaths in that area since 2021.
Commenting on proposals to suspend asylum rights, he stated: “The practice of instrumentalising migration may also put asylum seekers and migrants in a particularly vulnerable position, which only corroborates the need to fully protect their rights in this complex and challenging situation.”
The commissioner urged the ECHR to “consider restating the obligation to ensure genuine and effective access to a possibility to apply for protection, notwithstanding the challenges posed by instrumentalisation”.
Migration was one of the key issues during the last Polish parliamentary election with the former ruling Conservatives (PiS) targeted by Tusk’s Civic Coalition for allegedly letting in hundreds of thousands of migrants on work and student visas while dehumanising migrants and treating them inhumanely on the border with Belarus.
Once in office Tusk and his government have taken the same line as PiS with regard to the border with Belarus , arguing that Poland was facing a hybrid war with illegal migrants used as weapons.
