June 13, Pozirk. Belarusian opposition leader Śviatłana Cichanoŭskaja described the persecution and harassment of current and former students of Vilnius-based European Humanities University (EHU) by the Belarusian authorities as an act of transnational repression.
Alaksandar Łukašenka’s regime is targeting an educational institution inside the European Union, proving that “repression has no borders and no limits,” she said on X.
Earlier this month, rights defenders reported intensified raids targeting students, alumni and their family members in the case against EHU, which was blacklisted as an “extremist” organization in mid-April. Association with an extremist group in Belarus carries a penalty of two to seven years in prison.
Committee for State Security (KGB) agents have been harassing alumni who graduated between 2019 and 2025, demanding that they produce their degree certificates, the Viasna Human Rights Center said. Searches and interrogations also target current students and other people with alleged links to the university. The criminal investigation reportedly focuses on EHU tuition payments starting from 2016.
EHU was founded in Minsk in 1992 as a private school, but the Łukašenka government shut it down in 2004, forcing it to relocate to Lithuania.
Earlier this year, Dźmitryj Bryloŭ, a departmental chief at the Prosecutor General’s Office of Belarus, claimed that the exiled university provides support to radical politicized groups and destructive foreign NGOs and is used by state security agencies to cause damage to Belarus.
According to its website, EHU receives support from the European Union, the Nordic Council of Ministers, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, the governments of the Netherlands and Iceland, and other donors.
Until recently, Belarusians accounted for about 74 percent of EHU’s student body.
