Imagine you live in a foreign country and your passport expires. You have only two choices: either returning home to get a new one and risk being arrested on arrival, or staying where you are without proper documents.
What do you do?
That’s the situation facing Belarusians who live abroad, including many dissidents who self-exiled to avoid lengthy prison sentences. Last month president Alexander Lukashenka banned diplomatic missions overseas from exchanging, renewing or issuing new Belarusian passports.
The new decree also rules that Belarusians seeking to sell a property or a car, or obtain a copy of their university degree, can only do so in person in Belarus. A power of attorney issued abroad will no longer work.
This dilemma isn’t equally stark for everyone, not all who have left the country did so because they were certain prison awaited them. But the peculiarity of Belarus’s mass repression lies in the fact people often have no idea that they have come to the attention of the security services. One doesn’t have to be a journalist, or have taken part in protests or engaged in political activities to do so; people have ended up in prison for something they liked on social media years ago. This means no one returning to Belarus can feel completely safe.
The Security Council of Belarus tactfully claimed the new decree was needed to “lighten the workload of diplomatic missions”. But some lower-ranking officials were more up front. Deputy Oleg Gaidukevich, the chairman of the pro-government Liberal Democratic party, said the measure represents a “final blow to the fifth column”.
“A normal citizen has no problem changing his passport,” claimed Gaidukevich, but “an extremist is afraid to come [to Belarus and face] a criminal case”.
Addressing the Belarusians who have left for political reasons, the deputy said: “Actually, you have not been citizens of Belarus for a long time. You do everything against Belarus, you work against your country... Those who betrayed the country and don’t want to return [should] stay [where they are] to live.”
Dissidents who intend to return must first repent. Back in February 2023, Lukashenka created a repatriation commission, which citizens who left for political reasons can apply to. Each person must explain in detail what they might have done wrong, express “sincere repentance”, apologise publicly and compensate for any damage caused.
But even readiness to repent offers no guarantee of their safe return. As Lukashenka emphasised, the authorities will help only those who become “yabatki [a term for supporters of the dictatorship in Belarus] even greater than those who surround us today.”
An alternative passport
It was so obvious that Minsk was headed towards a complete severance of ties with its overseas Belarusians that the opposition began working on a solution long before the decree was issued.
In August, a draft ‘alternative passport’ was unveiled by the United Transitional Cabinet, a government in exile led by 2020 presidential candidate Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya and operating from Lithuania.
Tsikhanouskaya spent a year conducting preliminary consultations with representatives of the European Commission and some national governments, and hopes the alternative passport will be a biometric document that meets the standards of the International Civil Aviation Organisation, which Belarusians can use as identification abroad.
An independent legal entity registered in Lithuania, similar to a passport office, would create the passports – with the personal data it collects to do so protected by EU law.
The United Transitional Cabinet has said that if it succeeds in officially forming a government, all Belarusians will receive the new passport, whose design features symbols prohibited by the Lukashenka regime: the ‘Pahonia’ coat of arms, which was once Belarus’s national emblem, and the white-red-white flag. But for now it will be available only to Belarusians living abroad – having the passport in Belarus would be grounds for persecution.
Since Lukashenka’s decree was issued, the need for an alternative passport has become more pressing. “This decree threatens the legal status of hundreds of thousands of people. A quick and long-term solution is needed,” Tsikhanouskaya said in a speech to the European Parliament on 13 September. “Very soon we will come to the governments of your countries with a request to recognise our new passports.”
Tsikhanouskaya’s senior adviser, Franak Viačorka, told openDemocracy that samples of the alternative passport will be sent to the European Commission and EU governments early next year. The United Transitional Cabinet plans to start issuing passports to Belarusians abroad at the same time, without waiting for the EU’s approval, meaning the first recipients of the new document will likely not immediately be able to use it.
International recognition of alternative passports would be the most convenient and universal option for solving the current problem for Belarusians
The United Transitional Cabinet has already received around 60,000 applications for alternative passports, and Viačorka estimates this could rise to 100,000. Yet he stressed that a wide-ranging international consensus on the documents will be difficult and unlikely to be reached anytime soon – no country has ever previously issued such documents without the help of government agencies.
The procedure and speed of review – as well as the final status they receive – may vary significantly between countries, Viačorka said, referring to the fact that some European states don’t recognise the independence of Kosovo but still accept their passports as a travel document.
“Our goal, at minimum: that this document can be used to identify individuals and establish their citizenship, allowing citizens to receive visas and apply for residence,” he added. Two European countries, he said, have already given their preliminary consent to the recognition of Belarusian alternative passports. Viačorka would not reveal which two countries, saying it was confidential.
Tsikhanouskaya’s team recognises the uniqueness of the situation. But Viačorka believes this could present some advantages. “We need to prove that this precedent is actually positive. Because it does not harm the system, but solves a problem that was created by the state’s irresponsible attitude towards its obligations within the UN,” Viačorka said.
An alternative to an alternative
International recognition of alternative passports would be the most convenient and universal option for solving the current problem for Belarusians. But this is not the only way to avoid illegal status.
Tsikhanouskaya’s team is also working on other options to help Belarusians who have left their country. Negotiations with Lithuania – where 49,000 Belarusians reside – are underway to extend the validity of residence permits and humanitarian visas and ensure Belarusians’ documents for obtaining a residence permit are accepted even when their passport has expired. Lithuanian authorities have already promised to issue many more ‘foreigner passports’, whose validity will be extended from one to three years.
The team also hopes to activate the mechanism for issuing so-called ‘foreigner passports’ elsewhere in Europe. These already exist in a number of European countries but are extremely rare.
Belarusians can also apply to individual states for international protection and obtain a Geneva passport (refugee passport) or another type of travel document – although only a small number of those who left Belarus did so previously. For example, there are at least 300,000 Belarusians in Poland, according to the Center for Belarusian Solidarity, but as of August 2023 only 5,230 had received additional protection as asylum seekers in the country, with a further 463 having obtained refugee status.
Lukashenka’s decree will likely push European countries to make various concessions on the issue of legalisation of Belarusians. But how responsive countries are to Belarusians’ problems may vary significantly, with the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs saying last month that it did not yet know what to do. But Belarusians living in post-Soviet countries likely face the most difficult position. One lawyer claimed that the International Organization for Migration has warned that those in Georgia may face deportations.
Many will risk returning to Belarus voluntarily – people do not want to become refugees and often believe they haven’t broken any Belarusian laws. But the security forces may disagree; the first detention at the border as a result of the passport decree allegedly took place at the end of September.
For Lukashenka, the situation is win-win: whether political emigrants receive an alternative passport, become refugees, or return to Belarus and end up behind bars, they will be de facto excluded from the totalitarian society he is building.
