The State Border Guard Service (VSAT) said on Thursday it will “assess the arguments” following a court ruling which described the pushback of migrants at the border as unlawful.
“In its activities, the VSAT always follows the provisions and requirements of legislation in force in Lithuania, and the service will assess the arguments set out in the court ruling,” VSAT spokesperson Giedrius Mišutis said in a written response.
The Supreme Administrative Court of Lithuania (LVAT) in its ruling on December 30, which was made public on Wednesday, said border guards had acted unlawfully by pushing back a migrant to Belarus after he had crossed the border irregularly.
“By forcibly expelling the applicant from the Lithuanian territory and by not granting him a real opportunity to submit an asylum application, VSAT officers acted unlawfully,” the ruling said.
VSAT spokesperson Mišutis did not specify whether the court decision would in any way change the procedure for accepting asylum applications at the border or the actions of officers in pushing back migrants who have crossed the border irregularly.
“This is the first case in which a refusal to accept an asylum application not at a border point has been described as unlawful,” the applicant’s lawyer, Rytis Satkauskas, told LRT.lt.
The applicant, a Sri Lankan national, was pushed back to Belarus together with other migrants in October 2023. After spending several more days in forests along the border, he was taken to a hospital in Lithuania, where he was diagnosed with frostbite.
The court found that responsibility lay both with the applicant, who chose “an illegal way of entering the territory of the European Union during the cold season”, and with officers of Belarus, who “repeatedly forced him to attempt to cross the border and did not allow him to return to inhabited areas”.
The ruling stated that VSAT officers were also at fault due to their actions.
The same group of migrants included a Syrian national whose limbs were later amputated due to frostbite, the non-governmental organisation Border Group said in a press release on Wednesday.
In August 2021, Lithuania decided to implement the policy of so-called pushbacks, which are illegal under international law but are often employed by countries facing migration crises.
Lithuania has argued that the pushback policy is applied on the basis of national law and an order by the Interior Ministry, and was used to respond to what Baltic and Brussels officials called a hybrid attack by Belarus.
Correction: the policy of pushbacks was adopted in 2021, not 2023.
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