BELARUS SAID TODAY it is further restricting citizens from leaving the country, including those with foreign residency permits, in a move the opposition denounced as “an absolute violation of the law”.

The development comes as dozens of Belarusians, some of them illegally, have been fleeing their country in recent months amid a bloody crackdown in the wake of the disputed re-election of President Alexander Lukashenko last August.

The Belarusian border guards service said it has “received recently many requests to leave Belarus on the basis of a (foreign) residence permit,” according to a statement published on the Telegram messaging app.

However, it said only citizens with papers granting them a “permanent stay in a foreign state” had the right to leave Belarus.

It added that “permission for a temporary stay… does not constitute a reason for travelling abroad.”

Under Lukashenko, who has ruled the country since 1994, Belarus imposed restrictions on foreign travel in December 2020, framing the decision in the context of fighting the coronavirus pandemic.

Leaving the country by land routes is in any case only possible once every six months.

“The Lukashenko regime has severely limited the right of Belarusians to travel, asserting that certain reasons are not sufficient to leave Belarus,” said Valery Kovalevsky, an advisor to opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who lives in exile in Lithuania.

“However, the constitution foresees no condition,” he added, denouncing what he called “an absolute violation of the law.”

Air travel remains open, but the destinations have been limited since the European Union banned Belarusian planes from its air space after Minsk last month scrambled a fighter jet to divert a Ryanair flight and arrested a dissident journalist onboard.

EU country Lithuania, which neighbours Belarus, has offered support to fleeing Belarusians by granting them six-month visas.

Belarusian freelance journalist Alexander Burakov, who regularly reports for Germany’s Deutsche Welle, was freed today after 20 days in jail where he said he was tortured for covering an “unauthorised event”.

Germany has been trenchant in its criticism of Belarusian strongman Alexander Lukashenko over his brutal crackdown on anti-regime protesters and the recent shock diversion of an international flight to arrest an opposition journalist on board.

Burakov was “freed from prison on Tuesday after 20 days in detention,” Deutsche Welle said.

“I am very relieved that our colleague has withstood the unlawful detention more or less unscathed,” DW’s director general Peter Limbourg said in a statement.

“But there are growing concerns that the spiral of state violence against journalists keeps turning.”

He said it was becoming more likely that the regime in Belarus will “hush the last independent voices in the country, no matter by what means”.

Burakov was arrested on May 12 for covering the trial of opposition activist Pavel Sevyarynets and others and was charged three days later with participating in an “unauthorised event.”

Burakov told the court he had been “subjected to torture and inhuman treatment” in prison, woken up several times at night and forced to undress.

Media rights monitor Reporters Without Borders ranked Belarus 158th out of 180 in the world in its 2021 World Press Freedom Index.

According to the Belarusian independent rights group Viasna, there are 449 political prisoners incarcerated in the former Soviet republic.