Rule of Law Clinic submitted an amicus curiae brief to the European Court of Human Rights in the case of C.O.C.G. and Others v. Lithuania (application no. 17764/22).
The case concerns four Cuban nationals and their repeated attempts in March and April 2022 to enter Lithuania by crossing the border with Belarus. They submit that on each attempt Lithuanian border guards pushed them back, at gunpoint, into Belarusian territory, without giving them an opportunity to submit asylum applications. They eventually entered Lithuania and were apprehended. In April 2024, the Second Chamber of the ECtHR, to which the case had been allocated, relinquished jurisdiction in favour of the Grand Chamber of the Court.
In in its intervention, Rule of Law Clinic argued that Lithuanian domestic legislation, introduced in response to the rise in irregular border crossings from Belarus, alongside with the actions of the Lithuanian authorities on the ground, effectively deprived third-country nationals of a genuine and effective possibility to submit reasons against their return and to receive an individualised assessment of their arguments. Such practices are incompatible with the non-derogable principle of non-refoulement, deriving from Article 3 of the Convention (prohibition of inhuman and degrading treatment), and Article 4 of Protocol No. 4 to the Convention (prohibition of collective expulsion of aliens).
The intervention offered a critical perspective on the alleged ‘hybrid attack’ or ‘migrant instrumentalisation’ by the Belarusian regime, the concepts used by the Lithuanian authorities as a rationale for derogating from EU and international human rights law. Drawing on extensive data, collected by Dr Aleksandra Ancite-Jepifánova, Senior Fellow at Rule of Law Clinic, the intervention showed that the ‘migrant instrumentalisation’ concept is vaguely defined, highly problematic on a variety of levels, does not accurately reflect the realities on the ground and undermines the Rule of Law. Among other things, it argued that individuals crossing from Belarus make up a highly heterogeneous group, find themselves in diverse situations and do not necessarily have any connection with the Belarusian or Russian authorities.
