Leaving Abroad: without stamp, but with a blacklist
- 3.01.2008, 17:03
Since January 1, 2008 citizens of Belarus can temporarily go abroad without a stamp in a passport. Simultaneously a so-called “blacklist” has come into force.
This decree confirmed the Regulation on setting up a common database listing Belarusian citizens, whose right to leave the country is temporarily restricted. The Interior Ministry is ordered to introduce the database. The Regulation also provides for the set of people whose right to leave the country is temporarily restricted; the order of informational interaction of state agencies (organizations) providing information to the database; the order of informing citizens about the fact that their right to go abroad is temporarily restricted, or about lifting this restriction, the BelaPAN informs.
The database contains data about citizens: who possess information classified as state secret, until the term indicated in the access permit; suspects or charged with a criminal offence until termination of the criminal prosecution; convicted for committing a crime, except those sentenced to deprivation of right to hold specific posts, until execution of punishment or release from punishment; those evading fulfillment of obligations imposed by the court until the end of the term defined by the court; those facing a civil suit, for the term defined by the court, but not longer than the end of the judicial proceedings; draft evaders, or those who failed to take part in inactive duty, until they turned up at military draft events.
In border checkpoints Frontier Service is to scan a passport’s zone with fundamental data about its owner. Automatically the data is to be compared with the database.
Information about presence or absence of temporarily restrictions to leave the country could be received by a citizen free of charge in Internal Affairs departments on citizenship and migration within a term of one month. The certificate of having no temporarily restrictions will be invalid for frontier guards if the database will have information about temporarily restriction of the right to leave the country for the moment of crossing the border.
One should note that the state duty paid for the permission stamp in the passport which hasn’t expired by January 1, 2008, would not be returned.
According to the Citizenship and migration department of the Interior Ministry of Belarus, in line with Article 8 of the Law “On State duty” of January 10, 1992, the state duty is to be returned partially or fully in the following cases: if a person paid a larger duty than needed under the law and so on. This article does not envisage a return of the duty after an act done. That is why the state duty paid for making a passport for leaving aboard for a citizen of Belarus cannot be returned though the permission stamp is cancelled since January 1, 2008. The actions for making a passport for leaving abroad have been performed already upon application of a citizen, the Citizenship and migration department of the Interior Ministry underlined.