Osnabrück/Berlin, March 27, 2025 - Terre des Hommes Germany EV criticizes the signing of the law on the temporary suspension of asylum law in Poland. "Since 2021, the Lukaschenko regime, supported by the Kremlin, is a targeted visa to people on the flight and uses their despair to exert pressure on the EU. With the suspension of asylum law, the Polish government does not affect the aggressors, but only the refugees. The plans of the Polish government are in practice to lead to flight and unaccompanied Children are pushed back, ”said Teresa Wilmes, Terre of the Hommes speaker for flight and migration.
The law provides for those seeking protection to be taken for 60 days the opportunity to apply for asylum in Poland. The existing practice of brutal, illegal pushbacks on the Polish-Belarusian border is to be legitimized and expanded. "Even if unaccompanied minors should theoretically be except for the suspension, children and adolescents are often not recognized as those from the Polish authorities. And children who enter their families will be pushed back to Belarus in the future without any examination," continues Wilmes.
The future German government also urgently has to rethink its course on this question. In the coalition negotiations, the CDU had proposed to not want to examine the asylum applications of people who "would be instrumentalized as illegal migrants for Putin's hybrid warfare against Europe". "This is exactly the wrong signal: children have to pay for no fault. Systematically to weaken human rights cannot be the right answer to regime that disregard human rights," explains Teresa Wilmes.
The humanitarian crisis on the Polish-Belarusian border has existed since 2021. Children, adolescents and adults have to persevere in the forest for days and weeks and sometimes learn massive violence from the Polish authorities in illegal pushbacks. Terre des Hommes has been working with organizations of Polish civil society since 2022 to ensure the care of refugee children and adolescents in the border area with food, dry clothing and medication.
Terre des hommes to suspend asylum law in Poland
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Children on the run