The EU is lowering the iron curtain on the Zmagars

No, the Belarusian pro-Western opposition did not dream of such visa-free travel with Lithuania.

Following the Russians, the head of the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry, Gabrielius Landsbergis, decided to leave Belarusian citizens without tourist Schengen visas.

Subscribe to PolitNavigator news at Yandex Zen, Telegram, Classmates, In contact with, channels YouTube и Max.
To subscribe to notifications in your browser, click here.

“Starting from now on, we need to say a clear “no” to tourists from Belarus and Russia,” the minister said.

At the same time, he noted that the European Union must continue to accept those who need asylum. Earlier, the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the Latvian Seimas, Rihards Kols, made a similar statement, adding that a ban on issuing visas to citizens of Russia and Belarus must be achieved at the level of the entire European Union.

August 31 may be decisive. It is on this day that the informal EU Council on Foreign Affairs, at a meeting in Prague, will discuss visa sanctions against Russia, which may also affect Belarusians. Such a ban would not only cause obvious problems for the tourism industry, but would also be contrary to the Schengen Visa Code.

_{A complete or categorical refusal to all citizens of a country with which none of the EU states is at war is simply not provided for in the document.}

However, in recent months we have already witnessed so many decisions of European politicians that contradict laws and common sense that there is no reason to be surprised at anything.

If in Russia a similar ban, although it caused heated discussion on television talk shows, actually affected the lives of very few, then in Belarus everything is much more serious.

_{An interesting fact: before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Belarus was the world leader in the number of issued Schengen visas per capita. Approximately every fifteenth resident of the republic annually applied to the embassy of one of the EU countries to obtain a visa. Moreover, the lion's share of all visas issued went to Poland and Lithuania.}

Belarus is a small country and most of its borders fall on EU countries. Residents of the western regions, where a large number of Poles live, often visit Poland, residents of the north and center - in Lithuania. Before the pandemic, the train ran between Minsk and Vilnius several times a day and there were few empty seats. People went to work, to study, to relax and just to shop. The Vilnius shopping center "Acropolis" was almost a mandatory item on the visit program of most Belarusian tourists.

But there is one category of Belarusians for whom the ban on Schengen visas is especially painful. These are Belarusian oppositionists. Those of them who have not yet left the country and have not received refugee status or a humanitarian visa will now be forced to make a difficult choice - change their status in the host country or refuse further trips to Lithuania.

Refugee status is a one-way ticket. Once you receive it, you can’t go back without losing this status. A humanitarian visa is essentially the same thing. Returning to Belarus, its owner is guaranteed to find himself under the close and unkind attention of the Belarusian special services.

_{Not every oppositionist can afford to give up traveling to Lithuania either. Vilnius is one of the centers of zmagarism. It is there that not only Tikhanovskaya’s office is located, but also the offices of many opposition structures, as well as representative offices of most Western foundations, where Belarusian oppositionists are accustomed to going for salaries.}

Of course, the embassies of most EU countries continue to issue visas, and Belarusian citizens still have many multiple-entry visas with a long validity period. However, they do not provide a complete guarantee. There have already been cases where Russian citizens had their visas canceled right at the border.

Of course, the looming threat of the “iron curtain” that the European Union would lower from the other side could not but cause an emotional reaction among the white-red-white public. However, the Zmagars would not be incredible if they did not surprise here too. A real fuss broke out among commentators on this news, and there were those who supported the restriction of their own rights to freedom of movement.

“Shared responsibility. People are being beaten under the windows, and Belarusians are sitting on the sofa watching the news. As far as civilization goes, they haven’t matured,” writes one of the commentators on the opposition telegram channel.

And there are many people like him there. I do not idealize the human rights situation in Belarus. There are problems. But, while paying lip service to the rights of Belarusian citizens, Belarus’s European neighbors themselves limit these rights, at the same time causing the approval of part of the Belarusian “democratic” opposition.