Over 60 Polish soldiers injured this year stopping illegal migrant crossings at Belarus border

Keep our news free from ads and paywalls by making a donation to support our work!

Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and is published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

So far this year, 63 Polish soldiers have been injured on the border with Belarus while attempting to prevent illegal crossings by migrants, the defence ministry has revealed.

Poland has been dealing with a renewed surge of crossings by migrants and asylum seekers – mainly from the Middle East, Asia and Africa – encouraged and assisted by the Belarusian authorities. In one case, a Polish soldier died after being stabbed while preventing a crossing.

However, attempted crossings have recently fallen following tougher measures introduced by the Polish government. Last week, the cabinet approved a proposed new migration policy that would allow the partial and temporary suspension of the right to claim asylum in Poland in response to the crisis on the border.

Deputy defence minister Paweł Bejda presented information to parliament last week on the situation at the border in response to questions from MPs.

He revealed that, from 1 January to 15 October this year, almost 28,000 attempted illegal crossings were recorded – more than the 25,000 seen in the whole of last year. In 2021 – when the border crisis began – there were 39,700 attempted crossings and in 2022 there were 16,000

“Citizens of Afghanistan, Syria and Iran dominate,” said Bejda. Other common nationalities include Somalis, Eritreans, Indians, Ethiopians and Yemenis, he added.

The deputy minister said that the modus operandi of those seeking to cross remained similar to the past: they use car jacks or angle grinders to create holes in the border wall or ladders to pass over it. Once across, they try to meet up with people smugglers on the other side.

Around 5,000 soldiers are currently supporting border guards and police at the border, said Bejda. In June, the government introduced an exclusion zone along parts of the border to combat people smugglers.

It has also softened rules on the use of firearms by officers in defence of the border in response to an increase in aggression this year from some groups trying to cross.

The deputy minister noted that such measures have helped reduce the number of attempted and successful crossings, which had surged in the first few months of this year.

Speaking to the Rzeczpospolita daily, deputy interior minister Czesław Mroczek confirmed reports that Prime Minister Donald Tusk had told fellow European leaders that Poalnd is now spending €600 million (2.6 billion zloty) a year on defending the border with Belarus.

As well as seeking to strengthen physical border defences and electronic surveillance systems on the border, the Polish government also wants to change the law to allow the authorities to refuse to accept asylum requests in certain cases.

In a draft new migration policy published last week, the government wrote that current international asylum regulations are “not adapted to current realities and require urgent changes”.

“In particular, this concerns the recognition of the right of a state threatened by hybrid activities to deny access to its territory to a foreigner who uses the submission of an application for international protection for this purpose,” they continued.

“Poland, respecting fundamental human rights in the scope of granting national and international protection, will strive to change the general approach at the [international] level” to allow the “temporary and territorial suspension of the right to submit asylum applications…in the event of a direct threat to the security of the state”.

Tusk presented Poland’s proposal at an EU summit last week and afterwards claimed to have “achieved what I wanted to achieve”. Media reports based on sources with knowledge of the meeting indicate that Poland received approval for its plans from EU leaders.

However, many human rights organisations and legal experts have criticised both the idea of suspending asylum rights and Poland’s tough approach at the border more broadly.

They argue that, even if migration is being “weaponised” by Belarus, there are many genuine refugees at the border who need protection and that the migrants are themselves victims of the “hybrid war” being waged by Minsk and Moscow.

“Suspending the right to seek asylum is flagrantly unlawful and Prime Minister Tusk knows this,” said Dinushika Dissanayake, Amnesty International’s deputy regional director for Europe last week. “EU member states like Poland are playing politics with the rights of refugees and migrants.”

“These proposals endanger the rights of people seeking safety,” she added. “They penalise people who may have been subject to violence and trafficking, or lured to EU borders under false pretenses. It is high time for the European Commission to send a clear message that fundamental rights cannot be bent to political interests.”

Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

Main image credit: Grzegorz Dabrowski / Agencja Wyborcza.pl

Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.