GENEVA, February 11. /TASS/. Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has criticized the European Union’s institutions for allowing the inhumane treatment of migrants right under its nose, calling EU president Poland's policy toward them as "violence against people seeking safety."
"Since the so-called ‘migration crisis’ began in Europe in 2015, EU institutions and member states have steadily eroded the foundations of asylum in the EU, instead opting for containment policies in third countries, pushbacks, and outright violence at borders," MSF said in a press release on its website. What the organization called "dehumanizing rhetoric" when referring to migrants and refugees as threats has been key in furthering these policies, it argued. As regards measures against people crossing from Belarus to Poland, MSF resolved that the concept of "hybrid warfare" "is one of the clearer examples of this."
According to MSF, since 2021, legislative changes in Poland "have progressively infringed on people’s rights to seek asylum, culminating in the proposal to entirely suspend this fundamental right for certain groups."
Of 442 people stranded at the border between Poland and Belarus, treated by MSF between November 2022 and November 2024, around half "were suffering from physical trauma related to violence."
With this in mind, MSF urged Poland and other EU countries "to stop endangering the lives and wellbeing of people seeking sanctuary" in the bloc. MSF called on Poland to "ensure that people have access to fair asylum procedures and humanitarian assistance.".