June 10, Pozirk. Authorities in Minsk have intensified their crackdown on European Humanities University (EHU) in Vilnius, opening a criminal case over tuition fees paid since 2016.
Individuals linked to the exiled university are now facing charges of facilitating and financing “extremism,” according to a human rights group called Viasna.
In response, on June 9, EHU announced that it had stepped up additional support measures for members of its community.
Belarusian law enforcers have conducted more than 30 searches targeting EHU’s alumni, students and staff as well as their relatives, Viasna reported on June 10. The Committee for State Security (KGB) is reportedly resorting to “shameless blackmail” by threatening the parents of current students with criminal prosecution if they fail to talk their children into terminating their studies and returning to Belarus within 10 days.
Relatives of some students have already been arrested.
KGB officers are also visiting people who graduated from EHU between 2019 and 2025 and forcing them to show their graduation diplomas.
Explaining the decision to institute criminal proceedings, the Investigative Committee said that “unidentified individuals contributed and collected funds, securities and other property starting April 30, 2016 to deliberately provide for the extremist activities of European Humanities University, designated as an extremist organization by a decision of the Supreme Court of Belarus on April 14, 2026,” according to Viasna.
Commenting on the extremist designation, Dźmitryj Bryloŭ, a departmental chief at the Prosecutor General’s Office of Belarus, claimed on April 14 that the exiled university provides support to radical politicized groups and destructive foreign NGOs and is used by state security agencies to cause damage to Belarus.
Association with an extremist group in Belarus carries a penalty of two to seven years in prison.
About 100 students have already left EHU fearing extremist-related persecution in Belarus, Rector Vilius Šadauskas told the Belarusian Association of Journalists at the end of May. Two lecturers and several IT specialists employed on a part-time basis also resigned.
European Humanities University was founded in Minsk in 1992 as a pioneering independent institution that introduced Western-style liberal arts education and critical thinking to post-Soviet Belarus. The Alaksandar Łukašenka government shut EHU down in 2004, forcing it to relocate to Lithuania.
According to its website, EHU receives support from the European Union, the Nordic Council of Ministers, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, the governments of Lithuania, the Netherlands, and Iceland, and other donors.
Until recently, Belarusians accounted for about 74 percent of EHU’s student body.
