The Lithuanian parliament is due to reconsider whether to impose more restrictions on Belarusian nationals. According to the Belarusian opposition, this is impacting the relationship between them and the host country that had welcomed them en masse following the fraudulent August 2020 presidential election and the subsequent crackdown.
Olga Karach is a prominent Belarusian activist whose Vilnius-based NGO Nash Dom (Our House) has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. She has now been denied asylum in Lithuania due to her alleged links to the Russian intelligence service. However, she will remain in the country with a temporary residency permit because the authorities admit there is a threat to her life in Belarus.
“If your security services believe that I am [working for] the other side, please deport me to Belarus. And we will see what happens,” Karach told reporters last week.
According to the documents available to the Baltic News Service (BNS), she travelled to Russia between 2015 and 2019 where she met with intelligence officers and provided them information about the Belarusian regime and opposition representatives and their activities.
The Lithuanian intelligence service, the State Security Department (VSD), also said Karach sought the support of the Russian authorities for her political activities in Belarus and discussed with them possible political commitments to Russia.
Allegations against her also allegedly include attending a conference in Russia, which also saw the presence of Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the late far-right Russian politician.
Speaking at the press conference in Vilnius last week, Karach asked rhetorically whether any journalists were working for foreign intelligence services.
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“Please tell me, who among you are FSB or KGB agents? According to the position of the VSD, certain people at certain conferences can be agents. I want to be sure that nobody here is working for them. But I am sure you are not,” she said.
However, the VSD said Karach did not reveal the actual reasons why she was denied asylum.
“This information is not public, so we will not comment on it in detail,” the intelligence service said. “Karach has been informed of the reasons that led to the assessment that she poses a threat to state security, which are not the ones she mentions in her public statements.”
Karach has now appealed against the decision not to grant her asylum and says her last visit to Russia was four years ago.
“I did not cooperate with anyone and I did not intend to cooperate. I understand that now, the Lithuanian Security Department needs to justify somehow that they did not grant me political asylum. This is an international scandal, and information is spreading outside Lithuania,” said Karach.
The Belarusian activist has been living in Lithuania for almost a decade, but only now the authorities declared her a threat to national security.
“Circumstances change, the situation changes and the Migration Department has received a new conclusion from the VSD that there is a threat to national security,” Lucija Voišnis, deputy director of the Migration Department, told LRT.
Future Belarus
Members of the Belarusian opposition in Lithuania say they are split on what the post-Lukashenko future of Belarus will look like.
“Karach's organisation Our House and she herself have always kept aloof from the main Belarusian NGOs operating in exile, whether here in Lithuania or abroad,” said Maksimas Milta, associate analyst at the Vilnius-based Eastern Europe Studies Centre. “Often, when we saw statements about the human rights situation or the political situation, Karach's position was different.”
There are almost 60,000 Belarusians in Lithuania and around 1,000 were deemed a threat to national security, subsequently having their visa or residency applications denied or their documents revoked.
According to Lithuanian intelligence, it was because they had links to Belarusian or Russian security services or supported Litvinism, a fringe branch of Belarusian nationalism that appropriates the history of the Lithuanian Grand Duchy and lays claim to Vilnius.
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Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the former opposition frontrunner against Lukashenko, warned Lithuanian officials about the souring relations and advocated against closing the border.
“The people of Belarus must be able to leave their country in the event of danger,” said Tsikhanouskaya, who has been in Vilnius since the rigged August 2020 presidential election.
“For the past three years, they have felt political and humanitarian support from Lithuania, and I do not want them to feel betrayed,” she said. “We are going to do everything ourselves to explain our position, to explain that if the borders are going to be closed, it is better to do it by economic means – to isolate the regime.”
Seimas Speaker Viktorija Čmilytė-Nielsen defended the earlier decision to prevent Russian nationals from acquiring regular visas, residence permits and buying property. Following intensive debates, Belarusian nationals were subsequently subjected to fewer restrictions.
“Inevitably, the debate will come back to the Seimas, but I think and hope that after the debate and weighing up all the pros and cons, we will leave the differentiation and not equate the treatment of Russian citizens and Belarusian citizens here in Lithuania,” Čmilytė-Nielsen said.
But the mood in the Seimas is changing.
According to Giedrius Surplys, Vice-Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Lithuania needs to stand by the Belarusian opposition, but the current rules need to be revised.
“We have to take care of our own national security,” he said.
Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said he was awaiting an assessment of how national security would be strengthened if Belarusians were subjected to the same restrictions as Russian nationals.
“I am not yet aware of any information that would allow me to say that if we stopped [Belarusians from entering the country], we would avoid the threats,” he said.
“Some interdictions are going on right now, that people have come to Lithuania who are potentially dangerous,” Landsbergis added. “I am not saying that this is not the case. I'm just saying that I'm not aware of it yet.”
Politicians are now putting the burden on the Lithuanian intelligence service and the Migration Department which have to assess each Belarusian national.
According to Seimas Speaker Čmilytė-Nielsen, there is always a risk that institutions will end up making mistakes. The question remains who will then be left to blame – the civil servants and specialists or the politicians?
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