Polish lawyer denied access to case of journalist Aliaksandr Burakou, who is banned from entering the Schengen Area

Poland was the coun­try that ini­ti­at­ed the journalist’s ban, and for sev­er­al years Ali­ak­san­dr Burak­ou has been try­ing to uncov­er the spe­cif­ic alle­ga­tions that result­ed in his pro­hi­bi­tion from enter­ing mul­ti­ple Schen­gen Agree­ment mem­ber states.

Ali­ak­san­dr Burak­ou. Pho­to: BAJ

Failed legal strategy

Ali­ak­san­dr Burak­ou Sr.’s inter­ests in War­saw are rep­re­sent­ed by lawyer Piotr Saw­ic­ki. They have been work­ing togeth­er for three years and devel­oped the fol­low­ing strat­e­gy: the lawyer advised seek­ing an expla­na­tion of the grounds on which the jour­nal­ist was entered into the SIS data­base (the Schen­gen Infor­ma­tion Sys­tem, used for secu­ri­ty mea­sures) in order to chal­lenge the ban. Burak­ou was unable to do this on his own.

“My lawyer appealed to the Voivode­ship Admin­is­tra­tive Court in War­saw, and on July 9, 2024, the court ruled that the refusal to pro­vide access to the mate­ri­als of my case was unlaw­ful. The lawyer con­tin­ued work­ing and appealed to the rel­e­vant admin­is­tra­tive bod­ies.

But on July 21, 2025, a response came from the Head of the Office for For­eign­ers: despite the court’s deci­sion, access was denied again.

The expla­na­tion was that the basis for my inclu­sion in the SIS is cov­ered by spe­cif­ic legal pro­vi­sions that deny for­eign nation­als the right to access such doc­u­ments,” explains Ali­ak­san­dr Burak­ou.

Banned without ever entering Poland

Accord­ing to the jour­nal­ist, he tried to fig­ure out on his own what he might have vio­lat­ed to be sub­ject­ed to a Schen­gen entry ban. But it remained a mys­tery: on March 2, 2021, he received a Pol­ish human­i­tar­i­an visa with­out any issues, but nev­er got the chance to use it because he need­ed to relo­cate to Lithua­nia. When, two months lat­er, Burak­ou sub­mit­ted doc­u­ments to the Lithuan­ian embassy, it turned out that at Poland’s ini­tia­tive he had been entered into the list of per­sons pos­ing a threat to Poland’s inter­nal secu­ri­ty — even though he had nev­er entered the coun­try.

Burak­ou sus­pects the cause may trace back near­ly two decades:

“In the mid-2000s, dur­ing my work as a jour­nal­ist, there was a seri­ous con­flict over the use of funds for acquir­ing equip­ment. This hap­pened in Poland, and I was the author of a let­ter that we sent to the Pol­ish Min­istry of For­eign Affairs, which was fund­ing the project. As a result, the equip­ment was urgent­ly pur­chased, but soon after I was stopped at the bor­der and my visa was can­celed.”

At that time, Burak­ou was banned from enter­ing Poland for three years. But lat­er, he repeat­ed­ly obtained Schen­gen visas from the Lithuan­ian embassy, crossed the bor­der with­out issues, and vis­it­ed EU coun­tries.

Ban expires in eight months

Accord­ing to the doc­u­ment Burak­ou has, he is banned from enter­ing Schen­gen coun­tries until March 2, 2026. This time, how­ev­er, he does not think it makes sense to just wait it out:

“Prob­a­bly, if after the first ban I had start­ed clar­i­fy­ing the grounds, this sit­u­a­tion wouldn’t have hap­pened now. But now, with my lawyer, we plan to appeal to a high­er court so that our rights are upheld. Because if Poland is con­sid­ered a rule-of-law state, then a basic prin­ci­ple should apply: if the court has ruled, it must be fol­lowed. Oth­er­wise, any Belaru­sian seek­ing refuge in Europe from polit­i­cal repres­sion could end up in my sit­u­a­tion.”

At present, Ali­ak­san­dr Burak­ou Sr. is forced to live in a coun­try out­side the Schen­gen Area. The jour­nal­ist left Belarus due to polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed per­se­cu­tion.

He worked as a free­lancer for Bel­sat, Radio Racy­ja, and Deutsche Welle. After the 2020 protests, he was detained twice for his pro­fes­sion­al activ­i­ties and put in admin­is­tra­tive deten­tion. Burak­ou even went on a hunger strike in a deten­tion cen­ter to protest the inhu­mane con­di­tions for detainees.

In Feb­ru­ary 2021, offi­cers from the anti-extrem­ism unit arrived at the journalist’s home with a search war­rant but effec­tive­ly con­duct­ed a full-scale wreck­ing of his apart­ment. They ripped apart his sofa, cut open his pil­lows, tossed food around the kitchen, and rifled through a bas­ket of dirty laun­dry. Ulti­mate­ly, they con­fis­cat­ed a lap­top, a phone, and sev­er­al flash dri­ves.