蜜芽传媒

The Polish parliament has passed a legal amendment allowing border guards to immediately expel migrants who cross the border illegally, before they can claim asylum.

Poland, Lithuania and Latvia have all seen a huge surge in the number of people, mostly from the Middle East, trying to cross into their countries from Belarus. Under international law, anyone seeking international protection must be given access to the asylum process, even if they have crossed a border illegally. But Poland says Belarus has been actively bringing in the migrants who they then send across the border.

Wojciech Przybylski is editor of Visegrad Insights and Fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM) based in Warsaw. He says he's very concerned at the move, but the Polish government has been put in an impossible situation by Belarus.

"Belarus is weaponising the migrants, who are paying, in order to get to the EU, to board planes provided by Belarus in different locations across the Middle East and Africa, and then they're abused by Belarusians as essentially cannon fodder... Poles try to respond to that, in a way which is also inhumane, by pushing people back across the border to Belarus."

(Photo: Polish soldiers set up barbed wire fence in Border Zone near Krynki Credit: Getty Images)

Show less