4 hours to find out if you are on the exit ban list
Although the citizens banned from leaving Belarus are expected to be notified by the government in good time, border guards turn away an average of 15-20 people daily. They give no explanations. Explanations must be sought at your local office of the Department for Citizenship and Migration. Previously, one needed to wait for 30 days in order to obtain confirmation that you are indeed banned from crossing the border.
Aliaksei Biahun, the deputy head of the Department for Citizenship and Migration, told the European Radio for Belarus that now it will take just four hours. “The processing procedure has now become much simpler in technical terms”, he said.
It means that the software has finally been loaded on the computers at district migration offices. Now, they don’t have to send inquiries to the Interior Ministry. District officials now have direct access to the national database. But Biahun declined to reveal the number of people on the list today. He says he doesn’t want people to worry.
“Why do we need to stir the public? If there are 5000 people on the list, it will be good. If there are 100,000, it will be bad. If a person is responsible for any wrongdoings, he or she will know that they will not avoid this database. Law-obeying people will not end up in this database for no reason. Trust me!”
The European Radio for Belarus reported earlier that over 100,000 people were entered into the database by the Interior Ministry alone. There are also those who were banned from traveling by KGB, courts and prosecutor’s offices.
We also decided to find out whether it is possible to avoid Belarus’s border crossing points and to travel through Russian airports.
The border control authorities at the Domodedovo International Airport in Moscow declined to confirm that they had the lists of Belarus nationals banned from foreign travel. But they promised that regardless of the citizenship – Belarusian or Russian, the people banned from foreign travel would not be exited through this airport.
Most likely, the border control officer meant the lists distributed among border guards in the whole world by Interpol. Two weeks ago, when the European Radio for Belarus called the border guards at Domodedovo, we were told about Interpol lists.
At the Sheremetyevo International Airport in Moscow, we were given almost the same answer and were advised to seek comments from Russia’s Federal Security Service.
Border guards at the Pulkovo International Airport in St Petersburg could not clarify the picture, either. According to a border control officer, Belarusians are checked in the same way as Russian nationals. There is no difference. One can conclude that there is still a “hole” for the Belarusians who are not allowed to travel abroad.
