LONDON: Asylum-seekers are being forcibly expelled at the borders of some EU countries, Europe’s most senior human rights official has warned.

The Council of Europe’s commissioner for human rights, Michael O’Flaherty, sounded the alarm over the treatment of asylum-seekers in comments to The Guardian. The “securitization response” encouraged by populists in Europe is “going too far,” he said.

Poland, Greece and Latvia are among the countries that have pushed back asylum-seekers.

O’Flaherty testified last month before the grand chamber of the European Court of Human Rights. The court cases were brought by asylum-seekers against Poland and Latvia.

The case against the former involved 31 Afghans alleging that Polish border guards pushed them back to Belarus in 2021, giving them no chance to claim asylum.

The second case saw 26 Iraqi Kurds allege that they were expelled to Belarus from Latvia the same year.

“The willingness to shut down any possibility of asylum is a violation of law; the willingness to return people across a border at risk of persecution is a violation of international law,” O’Flaherty said.

“And it’s not necessary, because the numbers that are being intercepted at the fences are modest.”

Frontex, the EU’s border agency, reported about 17,000 irregular crossings over the bloc’s eastern land border last year.

Lawmakers in Poland are proposing plans to temporarily suspend the right to asylum. Prime Minister Donald Tusk has said migration is a question of “the survival of our Western civilization.”

Asked about the alleged pushbacks from Poland, O’Flaherty said he was “not in a position to describe a universal practice,” but was “confident that there have been sufficient incidents to be a cause of great concern.”

There is also “compelling evidence” of expulsions on the Greek border with Turkiye, O’Flaherty added.

He visited Greece in February to discuss the Adriana shipwreck with officials. The June 2023 disaster led to more than 700 migrants drowning in the Mediterranean Sea, with NGOs accusing Greek authorities of negligence.

O’Flaherty also addressed growing calls within Europe to “off-shore” asylum processing, including an Italian agreement with Albania and Britain’s axed Rwanda plan.

He said any external centers have to guarantee certain human rights: the right to claim asylum and appeal a decision; “appropriate reception conditions”; no detention of children; and ensuring asylum-seekers would not be returned to a country where they risk persecution.

The current period is the “most challenging time for the protection of human rights” he has seen in his career, O’Flaherty told The Guardian. The Irish national began working with the UN in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1993.

Since 2024, centrist politicians have been willing to suspend or ignore human rights obligations, particularly concerning asylum rights, he said.

“Centrist politicians are saying things that would have been unacceptable a very short time ago, and that worries me, because if I can mangle a quotation from the Irish poet William Butler Yeats, ‘when the centre cannot hold, things fall apart,’” O’Flaherty added.

MANNHEIM: A car drove into a crowd of people in the western German city of Mannheim on Monday, killing at least one person, injuring several others and overshadowing carnival celebrations in the region where police had been on alert for security attacks.
Police detained the car’s driver and later said he had acted alone, with no broader threat seen for the public.
People were seen lying on the ground at the scene and at least two were being resuscitated, an eyewitness told Reuters. Bild newspaper reported that two people were killed and 25 injured, 15 of them seriously, citing security sources.
It was unclear whether the driver acted deliberately or if there was any connection to Germany’s carnival celebrations, which culminated on Rose Monday with a number of parades, although not in Mannheim, which held its main event on Sunday.
The Focus Online website reported that the man detained by police was a 40-year-old from the neighboring state of Rhineland-Palatinate and that he was receiving hospital treatment, citing security sources.
Police declined to comment on the suspect’s identity, saying this was a focus of their investigation.
Security has been a key concern in Germany following a string of violent attacks in recent weeks, including deadly car rammings in Magdeburg in December and in Munich last month, as well as a stabbing in Mannheim in May 2024.
Police were on high alert for this year’s carnival parades after social media accounts linked to Daesh called for attacks on the events in Cologne and Nuremberg.
German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser canceled her attendance at the parade in Cologne on Monday, Germany’s biggest, due to the events in Mannheim, a spokesperson for the minister said.
Rose Monday, the culmination of the annual carnival season celebrated in Germany’s mainly Catholic western and southern regions, features parades of floats that often include comical or satirical references to current affairs.
This year’s carnival has included floats featuring US President Donald Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin, tech billionaire Elon Musk and Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky.
Dressed in traditional jester costumes and sporting colorful makeup, thousands of partygoers danced through the streets of Cologne, Dusseldorf and other cities in western and southern Germany ahead of the fasting season of Lent.