Belarusian law students enrolled at European Humanities University are filing reports with JURIST on current circumstances in Belarus under the constitutionally-disputed presidency of Alexander Lukashenka. Here, one of them comments on proposed legislation now being steered through the Belarusian parliament that would authorize removal of citizenship from ordinary Belarusians. For privacy and security reasons, we are withholding the name of the correspondent filing this report. The text has only been lightly edited to respect the author’s voice.

Recently, the Belarusian Parliament has received a lot of “interesting” bills, including the bill “On the denunciation by the Republic of Belarus of the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights” and a bill according to which young men who are students of foreign universities will no longer receive a deferral from military service.

Here, however, I would like to discuss a bill that will affect a much wider number of Belarusians. This is a bill to amend the bill “On Citizenship of the Republic of Belarus”, which will allow the Belarusian authorities to deprive ordinary Belarusians of citizenship.

And what is most unusual, it will be possible to deprive even those Belarusians who acquired citizenship by birth.

In order to make the context of what is happening more clear to you, Belarus has already adopted a bill that Belarusians can be tried in absentia for extremist activities. It means that now it’s possible to condemn a person even if he is already forced to be relocated in another state.

The citizenship of those convicted of certain crimes could have been revoked earlier under 24 articles (mass riots, mercenary activity, terrorism, and so on). But that could only happen to those who became citizens “as a result of admission to citizenship of the Republic of Belarus”, and not by birth.

The new bill will concern all Belarusians. The new grounds for deprivation are set down in 55 articles that cite making calls for sanctions, doing violence or threatening violence against an employee of the internal affairs bodies or an official, and many other articles that human rights activists consider to be political.

In the document, this is veiled as follows: “if the legal facts relevant for making decisions on citizenship issues arose before this Law came into force, then decisions on citizenship issues are made in accordance with this Law.” In other words, those who are already serving a sentence right now for, for example, calling for sanctions or insulting a policeman will be able to be deprived of citizenship. But even if a person has not been convicted yet, but wrote some comment three years ago, which may be considered a threat of violence against an internal affairs officer, the author may be deprived of his passport.

I would like to note that this violates the current Constitution, which states that the bill in the Republic of Belarus is not retroactive.

Also, according to this bill, persons who have obtained citizenship or a residence permit of another state must necessarily inform the internal affairs bodies or the bodies of the diplomatic service about this.

The entry into force of this bill is only a matter of time. This bill has already been adopted in the first reading, we are waiting for the second. After the adoption of the law by the Parliament in two readings, the bill will have to be approved in the upper house of Parliament — the Council of the Republic. After that, it will be sent to Alexander Lukashenka for signature.

If the bill passes all these stages unchanged, it will enter into force six months after its official publication.