According to a decree issued by Belarusian ruler Alexander Lukashenko, his country’s embassies are no longer allowed to issue passports. From now on, this is only possible in Belarus itself – also for citizens living abroad. This is a particular problem for critics of the regime, because they can be arrested if they have to obtain new travel documents in their home country.
New passports are only issued at police stations and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Minsk. For tens of thousands of citizens who protested the rigged 2020 presidential election and then moved abroad, traveling home poses a major risk. On the other hand, once their Belarusian document has expired, they now expect huge bureaucratic problems with the extension of the presidential election and the residence permit in the host country. This also applies to Austria.
Only a small group of Belarusians in Austria
The current decree is only irrelevant for the Belarusians who have applied for political asylum and no longer need valid documents from their home country to legally reside in the host country. But in Austria, for example, this is a small group: while according to statistics from the Austrian Ministry of the Interior, only slightly less than 100 Belarusian citizens have applied for political asylum in this country since 2020, according to Statistics Austria there are about 2,100. Belarusians lived in Austria in early 2023. It is unclear how many of them are blacklisted by the Lukashenko regime and will therefore face repression if they return home.
“Hundreds of thousands of Belarusians have effectively lost the protection of their state and we are now trying to compensate for this work by issuing documents,” Frank Vyachorka, foreign policy adviser to opposition leader Svetlana Tichanovskaya, said Monday night. He said templates of personal documents that Tichanovskaya, who lives in exile in Lithuania, and her team intend to provide to Belarusian citizens will soon go to press.
It is hoped that Belarus’ neighbors and European partners will understand, so that these new documents will also be recognized for travel and identification as soon as possible. “The topic has already been raised in meetings with representatives of Austria and we hope for the support of the Austrian government and Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg in recognizing these documents,” said Vyachorka.
The Austrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs is looking for solutions
“Like other EU member states, we are aware of the problem of extending the passports of Belarusians living in exile,” a spokeswoman for the Austrian foreign ministry said Wednesday morning. Efforts are being made to find pragmatic solutions for those affected, with the Interior Ministry responsible for issuing the relevant residence permits, she explained.
The parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg had already argued this summer for a different solution to the passport problem. A resolution of 20 June 2023 asked member states of the Council of Europe to work with the European Commission to find solutions that would allow Belarusians to travel in the EU, in particular using foreign passports and the recognition of expired passports.
Source: Krone
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