The Regime Has Been Left A Fool

The Belarusian authorities have only spoiled their image.

Good news is worth its weight in gold these days. "The best Christmas present": a Belarusian woman overcame bureaucracy and received a foreigner's passport in Norway". Let's rejoice together! But wait: why would a person who has citizenship need a foreigner's passport?

You have no documents

For those who don't follow the Belarusian news, this is quite a natural question, writes planbmedia.io. Recall the essence of the problem: in 2023, Lukashenko's decree of 2023, the Belarusian embassies "ceased to perform all functions related to documentation. Since then, the citizens of Belarus living abroad have been deprived of the opportunity to obtain, exchange or renew a passport through the embassy. A passport expires - go to Belarus for a new one. A child is born - welcome to get a passport back home.

The problem is that for many Belarusians, who now live abroad, the word "home" may be synonymous with the word "prison". "For many" - how many? If you look at the statistics, there are not so many people with humanitarian residence permits and refugees among immigrants (in Lithuania it is up to 10% of the Belarusian citizens who have residence permits).

But the true situation is worse - the bulk of Belarusians who left for political reasons and are at risk when returning home were legalized on the most usual grounds - work, bluecard, family reunification. This was shown both by the first surveys and later interviews with immigrants from Belarus.

"There is a high risk that these exiles will be persecuted if they return to Belarus," the UN experts summarized. "I assume that the situation in Belarus will remain as it is for the time being in the near future. Therefore, to renew my passport, I have to go to Belarus, and I can't do it yet. That is, my way is cut off for the time being. Accordingly, I have to look for some options," explained the Belarusians.

Passport issue

The "passport issue" arises gradually for the majority of Belarusian immigrants: "We have no problems with passports so far, but we realize that the problem will arise in two years. Colleagues have already had these issues. Most of them cannot return to Belarus in order to change their passports."

There are also reasons to rejoice: "My husband and I got caught in the rain in 2019 and soaked our passports, so we made new ones - we have them until 2029! So everything is good in that respect." It's all good, you know? Four years of certainty ahead, that's an unprecedented luxury!"

"I once asked my Lithuanian colleague, "Kaip sekasi?" And he said, "Here, I wrecked my car." I told him: "Don't worry, you'll get it repaired - the main thing is that no one was hurt, that everyone is alive and well." And he said to me: "Yes - I hear that some people live without a passport, so I have no problems in life at all!"

Lithuania offered support to Belarusians in solving the problem with passports almost immediately after the adoption of the decree on limiting consular services. This support is in line with accepted international norms and includes the issuance of Geneva passports (for political refugees), a foreigner's passport (a travel document that gives a foreign citizen the right to cross the border multiple times in the absence of a valid passport) and simplified renewal of residence permits for people who reside on a foreigner's passport.

These measures have turned a seemingly insurmountable problem into a routine administrative procedure: "Our child, who was born in Lithuania, has no citizenship, but we registered her by writing a letter to the migration office that we have no possibility to make a passport for the child. And we were made a residence permit for the child without a passport. Then our eldest son also ran out of passport, and we wrote exactly the same letter. And now our eldest son also has a residence permit, although he doesn't have a Belarusian passport.

Passport issue: the guilty party is obvious

After more than two years of the decree, one can see that those who tried to "punish Belarusians in exile" with its help were fools. This measure not only made tens of thousands of Belarusians abroad even less loyal to the authorities of their country, but also showed other countries what the current Belarus has become.

"We don't understand why you shouldn't go to Belarus and make a new passport" - approximately with such wording a year ago, the daughter of the happy Belarusian from the news, with which this text began, was denied a foreigner's passport. But then the information about the country in the migration authorities of Norway was updated - and there were no more questions "why". This is the loss of the country's image, and even more - the image of its leadership. If you want to improve it - return consular services to the citizens.

And until then, more and more Belarusians will be happy with "Christmas presents" in the form of the opportunity to realize their fundamental right to freedom of movement and think about the fact that only memories are waiting for them at home.

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