Lithuania refused to grant political asylum to the head of the Belarusian Centre for Civil Initiatives “Our House,” Olga Karach.

 

This was reported by “Meduza” with reference to Karach herself.

According to her, the Lithuanian authorities consider her a “threat to national security”. They explained their decision by the fact that she had interviewed the founder of the LDPR, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who died last spring, as well as participated in conferences in Russia, including those organised by the European Commission.

Olga Karach is a Belarusian activist and public figure who actively opposes the regime of Aliaksandr Lukashenka. Since 2011 she lives and works in Vilnius. She is the author of the initiative Chinovniki.info – a portal that monitors and analyses the activities of officials in Belarus.

At the beginning of December 2022 Karacz won the Human Rights Defence Award established by the authorities of the German city of Weimar. The award was presented to the human rights activist on Human Rights Day, which is celebrated on 10 December.

On 20 December last year, Olga Karach was taken off a flight in Rome. The activist was on her way to Bucharest for a security conference. In the Italian capital, customs officers boarded the plane in which Karach was flying to Romania. When checking her documents (Romania is not part of the Schengen zone – NV), it turned out that her passport had been cancelled on December 19. The Interpol database, as Radio Svaboda reported at the time, listed Karach’s passport as stolen.

Based on meduza.io