Strasbourg court rules Poland violated rights of asylum seekers turned away at border

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ruled that Poland must pay compensation to Chechen asylum seekers who were denied entry to the country. The court found that the Polish authorities had violated several articles of the European Convention on Human Rights.

The ruling follows longstanding concerns over the situation at the border between Belarus and Poland, where Polish border guards have been accused of illegitimately refusing entry to large numbers of mostly Muslim asylum seekers.

The 13 applicants in question, who are all Russian nationals, had arrived at the Polish border between 2016 and 2017 seeking international protection, due to fears for their safety in Chechnya.

The cases were brought by two families – one with five children and one with three children – as well as an individual man. They had travelled repeatedly to the border crossing at Terespol, informing border guards of their wish to apply for asylum.

The applicants were told by the border guards that they did not have authorisation to enter Poland and that they had not stated they were at risk of persecution in their own country.

However, the individuals involved say that they had in fact told the border guards that they “would face torture or other forms of inhuman or degrading treatment if returned to the Russian Federation” and that they “would not have access to an adequate asylum procedure in Belarus”.

In some cases, the groups were turned away from Poland despite the ECHR granting interim measures which should have prevented their removal to Belarus.

In a unanimous ruling, the Strasbourg court has now found that the Polish authorities violated three articles of the European Convention on Human Rights: Article 3 (prohibition of torture or inhuman or degrading treatment), Article 4 of Protocol No. 4 (prohibition of collective expulsion of aliens), and Article 13 (right to an effective remedy).

The court also found that Poland had failed to comply with its obligations under Article 34 (right to individual petition) of the convention. As a result, the ECHR ordered Poland to pay €34,000 to each of the applicants. 

In its ruling, the court wrote that it:

attaches more weight to the applicants’ version of the events at the border that had been corroborated by other witnesses. The reports by the national human right institutions had indicated the existence of a systemic practice of misrepresenting the statements given by asylum-seekers in the official notes drafted by the border guards at the checkpoints between Poland and Belarus…The authorities had been aware of the applicants’ fears of ill-treatment upon return, as the asylum applications had been shared with them by electronic means by their representatives as well as by the Court when it indicated interim measures under Rule 39. Accordingly, the Court could not accept the argument of the Government that the applicants had presented no evidence whatsoever that they had been at risk of being subjected to ill-treatment.

However, the ruling is not final, and can be challenged within three months by referring any of the cases to the Grand Chamber of the Court for further examination, where a final judgement would be issued.

Among the hundreds of thousands of Chechens displaced by conflict and repression, many have sought to claim asylum in Poland, as the first EU country they reach.

Over 70,000 Russian citizens have lodged applications to stay in Poland since the beginning of the second Chechen war in 2004, according to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

Yet there continue to be reports of border guards illegitimately turning asylum seekers away, arguing that they are not at risk of persecution in Chechnya or using inconsistencies in accounts – often collected quickly on the border – to undermine their claims, writes Onet.

The asylum seekers are mostly Muslim, and some experts claim this also contributes to difficulties seeking protection. Aleksandra Chrzanowska of the Association for Legal Intervention says that “increasingly deeper Islamophobia, into which [Poland has] been falling as a state since 2015, may affect the fact that for Chechens, as Muslims, it is much more difficult to obtain protection than for other refugees reaching Poland.”

In response to the new ruling, the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights says that the judgement should apply to all similar cases.

“The correct implementation of this judgement should therefore include a change in the practice which is continuing on the eastern border of Poland, of refusing to accept applications for international protection from foreigners seeking protection in Poland,” said the foundation.

Writing on Facebook, lawyer Sylwia Gregorczyk-Abram, who represented one of the applicants, said that it was “hard to describe how much and how often I felt helpless representing the refugees, in the clash with the Polish state”.

“Today shows that it was worth it and that justice is for everyone, although sometimes it comes late,” she added

The UN Refugee Agency also issued a statement on Friday saying that Poland should protect those fleeing war or persecution.

“Refusal to grant them entry at the border, without properly assessing their claims, is in dichotomy with the country’s obligations,” said Anne-Marie Deutschlander, UN Refugee Agency head for Europe, quoted by Reuters.

The ruling conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party has expressed resistance to receiving Muslim refugees in Poland. Last year, Jarosław Kaczyński, the chairman of PiS and Poland’s de facto leader, described Islam as a “cultural offensive” that “Europe must defend itself” from.

In April, the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic had breached their obligations under European law by refusing to take in quotas of refugees assigned to them.

Poland’s justice minister, Zbigniew Ziobro, responded by saying that Poland’s had simply “defended [its] sovereignty against the foreign culture of Islam”, which the EU “wanted to impose” on the country.

Because Polish authorities now refuse many applications, Chechen refugees often abandon efforts to seek safety in the country, and try to travel further west, believes Chrzanowska.

Data from the Office for Foreigners, cited by Euractiv, show that out of 4,096 asylum applications in Poland submitted in 2019, only 3% resulted in the granting of refugee status in accordance with the Geneva Convention. Over 42% of cases were rejected, while more than half were discontinued (for example because the applicant moved to another state).

Many Chechens have, however, been able to settle in Poland, and they in fact make up Poland’s largest refugee group. Large numbers came to the country in the 1990s and early 2000s, with some becoming well known, such as Polish mixed martial arts star Mamed Khalidov.

The Dzieci z Dworca Brześć (“Children from Brest station”) group, consisting of single mothers and children who fled Chechnya and spent months in limbo at the railway station in Brest on the Polish border, now volunteer in Poland, supporting the elderly, cooking meals for the homeless, and helping stray animals.

Main image credit: Helsińska Fundacja Praw Człowieka (@hfhrpl)/Twitter

Juliette Bretan

Juliette Bretan is a freelance journalist covering Polish and Eastern European current affairs and culture. Her work has featured on the BBC World Service, and in CityMetric, The Independent, Ozy, New Eastern Europe and Culture.pl.