“Investigate Lukashenko”: Lithuania’s request to the International Criminal Court

Brussels – “Impunity cannot continue, and justice must be done.” With these words, Ewelina Dobrowolska, Lithuania’s Minister of Justice, announced on Monday (Sept. 30) that Vilnius has officially requested the International Criminal Court to open an investigation into the regime of Belarus’s president and strongman, Alexander Lukashenko, among Vladimir Putin‘s staunchest allies.

Lithuania would like the strongman in Minsk to respond to alleged crimes against humanity, including, among others, forced mass deportations (mainly of African and Middle Eastern refugees, whom Belarusian authorities have pushed to EU borders on several occasions in what Brussels considers an act of hybrid warfare), persecution of political opponents, and detention of political opponents in inhumane and degrading conditions.

Since the 202020 elections, which the international community has branded as rigged in “White Russia,” there has been a recurrence of repression against dissent, with the imprisonment of thousands of opponents and activists and the flight of the symbolic figure of the opposition to Lukashenko, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who now lives in exile in Vilnius. According to Tsikhanouskaya’s estimates, about 300,000 Belarusian citizens have fled the country in the past four years, and more than 60,000 are in the Baltic Republic.

The Hague-based Court conducts investigations against individuals to verify allegations of crimes against humanity and war crimes. Lithuania had been very active in urging the institution’s legal action against Putin, for whom an international arrest warrant was issued in March 2023. Now, Vilnius would like a similar warrant for Lukashenko.

Belarus has never signed the 1998 Statute of Rome, which defined the Court’s mandate, and thus is not technically under the institution’s jurisdiction. However, if its president were to set foot on the territory of a state that has ratified it, the authorities of that country would be required to arrest him, should an international arrest warrant be issued.