Former political prisoner and ex-Radio Svaboda journalist Ihar Karnei has said that after his release and forced removal from Belarus, he found himself abroad without valid documents confirming his legal status.
According to Karnei, the Lithuanian national visa issued to him a year ago expired on July 10. At the same time, consideration of his application for international protection in Portugal, where he now lives with his family, has effectively stalled.
“The last piece of paper that gave me at least some legitimacy in this world has finally expired. I’m talking about the Lithuanian national visa that I received shortly after the June 2025 expulsion — the first of the more or less large-scale deals involving political prisoners. To be precise, there was first a short two-week visa issued directly at the Medininkai border crossing — my eyes had barely adjusted to the light after the KGB hoods. Then, following applications from human rights defenders and my former employers, it was upgraded on July 10 last year to a one-year visa — and that is the one that has now expired,” he wrote on Facebook.
Karnei said that after moving to the Azores, he initially tried to legalise his stay through family reunification but was refused because he was unable to provide a criminal record certificate.
“The initial attempt to join my family automatically as the third family member was unsuccessful. The local officials are simply obsessed with criminal record certificates. And that applies everywhere — from the office I mentioned to commercial banks. They even threatened to deport me to the country of my first entry if I failed to produce one by the appointed date. Fortunately, Portugal’s enforcement system is so slow that all those threats turned out to be nothing more than hot air,” he wrote.
Karnei then applied for international protection. He was issued a temporary document confirming that his application had been accepted for consideration, but it expired more than two months ago. According to him, he has so far been unable to obtain a new document or any information about the status of his case.
An additional problem arose when the Belarusian authorities invalidated his passport, even though it formally remains valid until 2030. Karnei noted that Portuguese authorities had nevertheless accepted the document when he signed an employment contract, opened a bank account and registered with the tax authorities.
“All things considered, the only thing left is to relax and go with the flow. The only truly frustrating part is being tied indefinitely to one place. The Lithuanian visa had at least given me some freedom of movement, whereas my current status is not far from that of a homeless person,” the former political prisoner concluded.
Radio Svaboda journalist Ihar Karnei was detained in July 2023 and sentenced in March 2024 to three years in prison on charges of participating in an extremist formation. According to the prosecution, he cooperated with the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ), which had been designated an “extremist formation,” and his reporting allegedly “created a false impression of the economic, social, military and international situation in the Republic of Belarus.” He was later sentenced to an additional eight months in prison on charges of persistent disobedience to the lawful demands of the prison administration (Part 1, Article 411 of the Criminal Code). Karnei was released and forcibly taken to Lithuania in June 2025.
