Lithuania on Friday rejected the asylum application of Olga Karach, a well-known Belarusian activist who runs a human rights center in Vilnius.
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The Lithuanian Migration Ministry’s decision was based on intelligence assessments indicating that Ms Karach posed a potential national security threat, she said.
“I received the decision at 8am today,” Ms Karach told AFP.
“The State Security Ministry has stated that my actions could pose a threat to Lithuania’s national security. It’s absurd,” she added.
At the request of AFP, the Migration Ministry and the State Security Ministry declined to comment on the case.
However, a possible deportation seems unlikely as long as Ms. Karach’s residence permit is still valid.
Ms. Karach heads the Lithuania-based NGO Nach Dom (Our Home), which provides humanitarian aid to Belarusians in both Lithuania and Belarus and monitors the human rights situation in this authoritarian state.
In 2021, the Belarusian KGB labeled Ms Karach a “terrorist” and last year the Minsk government listed the organization she heads as an “extremist” organization.
Ms Karach said she applied for asylum to avoid detention while traveling abroad. “If I go to a country and (Alexander) Lukashenko puts me on the Interpol list, I can just be detained there.”
Having obtained a residence permit in Lithuania since 2014, Ms. Karach fully settled in the country in 2020.
The activist also said that if the Lithuanian courts were against her, she would appeal the decision, including to the European Court of Human Rights.