After Lithuania had rejected political asylum to Olga Karach on August 18, 2023 and called her a “person posing a threat to the national safety of the Republic of Lithuania”, an international campaign #protection4olga was launched around the globe demanding protection and asylum for the director of the human rights organization Our House.

People that support the campaign know that for many years Olga has been fighting for human rights in Belarus, including the right to conscientious objection to military service. For that she is subjected to political persecution and is risking a death penalty in her home country, where the regime has labeled her as a “terrorist”, and the human rights organization Our House as an “extremist formation”.

The international campaign with the appeal to immediately grant protection to the human rights defender and peacebuilder Olga Karach is grounded on the UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders adopted in 1998, which acknowledges “the valuable work of individuals, groups and associations in contributing to, the effective elimination of all violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms of peoples and individuals”.

The campaign #protection4olga has already covered a lot of countries, and not always those are the countries with huge Belarusian diasporas there. That fact underlines the universal significance of the work that Olga Karach and the human rights organization Our House are doing.

Among those who supported the campaign on their social media are such organizations as “For Democracy in the Post-Imperial Space”, “Diaspora of the Belarusians of the World‘‘, European Bureau for Conscientious Objection(EBCO), War Resisters’ International, “Parliamentary Republic FUTURE OF BELARUS!!!”, International Peace Bureau (IPB), Internacional de Resistentes a la Guerra (Latin America), IFOR Austria (Austria), Giuristi Democratici (Italy), MovimentoNonviolento (Italy), Pressenza Deutsch (Germany), Centro Studi Sereno Regis (Italy), Un Ponte Per (Italy), Frauennetzwerk für Frieden e.v. (Germany), Bund für Soziale Verteidigung (Germany), and many others.

In addition, a lot of individuals from different countries, including the, Ukraine as well as the Belarusian refugees joined the campaign to support Olga.

We’d like to remind that Olga Karach, the leader of Our House, has to her credit multiple activities of monitoring violations of human rights in Belarus and defending human rights of Belarusian citizens both inside the country and in exile in foreign countries where they had to run to, for example, Lithuania, and that is why her organization has been chosen by International Peace Bureau to be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize of the year 2024 together with the Russian Movement of Conscientious Objectors and the Ukrainian Pacifist Movement.

Our House

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