Belarusian refugees ask Lithuanian MFA to facilitate obtaining visas for their relatives
The volunteer organization "Dapamoga" and the initiative "Pink Scarves" have started collecting signatures among Belarusians who have refugee status in Lithuania for a collective appeal to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of that country.
Photo: Pavel Tochinsky / Getty Images
The authors ask the Lithuanian authorities to facilitate the obtaining of entry visas for close relatives of refugees, writes Radio Svaboda.
If such visits are classified as humanitarian cases, the visa application procedure could be expedited through the MFA's mediation, as provided for by Lithuanian law, believe the authors of the appeal.
«Refugees themselves cannot travel to Belarus; some have not been able to see their parents or close relatives for years, because they also have problems with visits to Lithuania – it's almost impossible to get a visa, as the Lithuanian MFA currently only assists in cases of severe illness or death of a person. Therefore, our idea is for the visit of close relatives to be recognized as a humanitarian case, in which the MFA, according to the law, provides mediation», — Natalia Kalegava, one of the authors of the appeal and head of the volunteer organization "Dapamoga", told Svaboda.
The authors of the appeal propose their list of categories of relatives who, upon obtaining a visa, could count on the mediation of the Lithuanian MFA, and want to know the detailed procedure for submitting a visa application in such a case.
«Because people need to know exactly what documents will be required, within what timeframe the application will be reviewed, and how each person invited to Lithuania will be vetted», — explained Natalia Kalegava.
She believes that the safety of relatives at the Belarusian border should not be compromised:
«At the border, a relative might only be asked where they got their visa for Lithuania. The person will respond that their son or daughter has Lithuanian documents, and they were invited. That's all. No one is hiding that they are going to meet their close one, even if that close one is a 'three-time extremist'. They already have lists of 'extremists', and no one is jailed for meeting in Belarus yet. And the fact that they finally managed to get a visa is a different, entirely legal matter».
According to Kalegava, the list of signatories of the appeal will be strictly confidential; it will be handed over to the MFA as a separate annex and will not be published anywhere.
Activists will collect signatures for the appeal to the Lithuanian MFA until November 23 at the "Zamak" shelter in Vilnius.