Prosecutor General’s Office claims émigrés returning to Belarus

May 31, BPN. Some of those who applied to the commission that filters political emigrants willing to return to Belarus have already arrived in the country, the Prosecutor General’s Office has said.

The commission was estabished in January as a response to the mass exodus of opposition activists, journalists and ordinary citizens, which followed protests and crackdowns after the disputed 2020 presidential election.

In early May, Prosecutor General Andrej Švied said it had received over 70 applications, well below one percent of the estimated number of émigrés.

Pro-democracy leaders repeatedly warned exiled Belarusians that it was too dangerous to return because of the threat of persecution.