Extend the aid program for Ukrainian refugees to include Belarussian political refugees as well.

Petition of the Belarusian diaspora in Poland in support of Belarusian refugees

To the President of the Republic of Poland Andrzej Duda, the government and Seima of Poland, and the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights.

We ask you to turn your attention to the large number of Belarussian citizens currently leaving the territory of Ukraine due to aggression from the Russian Federation. Many of the Belarussians who were in Ukraine before the combat began had come to Ukraine after the events of August 2020 due to political repression. They experienced violence from the illegitimate regime in Belarus, faced prison time and other suppressions of freedom, were beaten, pressured psychologically, and many were charged with administrative and criminal crimes and persecuted for their civil activism. Ukraine became a second home for them.

Due to aggression from the Russian Federation and also to the support of Russia’s actions in Ukraine from the illegitimate Belarussian regime, many Belarussians are facing unjust condemnation. Their requests for aid and support are being denied, and we are seeing an increase in cases where Belarussians can’t leave the territory of Ukraine because they are denied entry onto trains from Ukraine to Poland or turned away at border crossings.

Belarussians now fleeing Ukraine are also victims of the war. They’ve been victims twice – first they fled repression in Belarus, and now they flee from the war in Ukraine. But they are not receiving the aid and support currently being given by Poland to Ukrainian citizens. 

These citizens of Belarus suffered in their fight for human rights against the brutal regime of Aleksandr Lukashenko. Now, they are political refugees once more. None of these Belarussians supported, nor will they support, the regimes of Putin or Lukashenko – on the contrary, they’ve fought with all their might against these regimes. 

We ask you to take all this into account and extend the aid program for Ukrainian refugees to include Belarussian political refugees as well.