Belarusians in the Czech Republic are often cut off from their families, says Běloruska
Update: 10/22/2022 12:36 p.m
Issued by: 10/22/2022, 12:36 p.m
Prague – Belarusian Kryścina Šyjanoková lives in Prague and saw her parents from Belarus for the last time in 2019. She cannot return to her native country due to her activities in the Czech Republic, and her parents cannot visit Prague due to visa restrictions. Being cut off from families is one of the issues being addressed by the very first congress of Belarusians in the Czech Republic, which is being held today in Prague.
“There are other activists in the same situation and activists who live in the Czech Republic, but because of their activities they are not allowed in Belarus, because they would probably end up in prison. And some know that criminal proceedings have already been initiated against them. And I’m not talking about people at all , who are holders of international protection, either in the form of asylum or supplementary protection, and are not allowed to travel to Belarus. It is now a very challenging period for them,” Šyjanoková, who is a representative of the Belarusian national minority in the council’s committee for national minorities, told ČTK. city and co-founder of the association of the capital of Belarus in the Czech Republic “Vieršnica”. “They have to settle in a foreign country, integrate, but at the same time they miss, for example, their wife and daughter, who remained in Belarus for certain reasons,” she alludes to a specific case of one of the Belarusians who reached the Czech Republic as part of the Medevac humanitarian program.
As Šyjanoková adds, despite the support from the Czech side for Belarus, “I still feel in a number of areas that they are being thrown into the same bag together with Russia, which is the aggressor when it comes to war.” In the case of Belarus, according to her, the aggressor is Lukashenka’s regime, which is separable from the Belarusian nation. “That’s why there is a lack of understanding that Belarus is an occupied state, and that’s why it needs a completely different treatment of people fleeing the country. That’s why it also needs more humanitarian aid,” she added to ČTK.
In its regulation from June this year, the Czech government decided that visas and residence permits will not be issued to Russians and Belarusians until the end of March 2023. This political step is to serve to protect the foreign interests of the Czech Republic in connection with the armed conflict in Ukraine, which provoked the invasion of the troops of the Russian Federation, which is supported by the Republic of Belarus, according to the government order.
So far, Belarusians have managed to negotiate only a few exceptions, for example when it comes to students who have an international, European or Czech scholarship. However, they must not be students of so-called critical fields
However, clients of banks and insurance companies who are citizens of Belarus, even though they are opponents of the regime there, also run into the restrictions. It is also currently not possible to send any shipment to Belarus from the Czech Republic. “It’s not so much that we can’t send a package to the family, because the employees of the Belarusian post office will probably unpack it anyway, but, for example, that we can’t send a letter to a Belarusian male or female prisoner in Lukashenko’s prison,” Šyjanoková continued. At the same time, the situation in the country is constantly deteriorating, right now according to the Vyasna organization, there are 1,344 political prisoners in Belarus
As the representative of the Belarusian minority in the Czech Republic added, it was clear to them from the beginning that “it will not be easy to remove the blanket visa completely, because the Czech Republic is afraid, for example, that Russian agents with Belarusian passports could potentially get here”. “However, we claim from the beginning that Belarus is not Russia and that the Belarusian democratic forces can ensure the necessary cooperation in the matter of verification,” she added, adding that they will continue to work with the Czech authorities and will try to negotiate additional exceptions for the Belarusians, such as offering a meeting separated families.
Most Belarusian associations and informal associations in the Czech Republic, not only those in Prague, are participating in the organization of today’s congress. The meeting is held under the auspices of the mayor m Prague Zdenek Hřiby (Pirates).