Belarusian Generation Y logbook

One does not have to explain how visas complicate the lives of young people, especially those from ex-USSR. Many plans, challenges, hopes and dreams crashed into the visa wall around close but yet so distant Europe. Here is another story which will hopefully draw some attention to the visa problem of young people in Belarus.

A Belarusian model, Tatsiana Rineyskaya, was among 12 lucky ones selected out of 75000 contestants in Benetton’s last online competition to become the face of their ad campaign. Her online followers cheered for the model when her achievement became known – a self-made 23-year old from the Belarusian province made it to the global level! We tend to notice, praise and boast about those Belarusians who make our country recognizable by something different from politics.

However, the “Beauty Ambassador” did not make it to the photo shoot in London where the winners had been invited to come. She could not travel to the UK as her visa application was denied twice by the British consulate in Minsk during the last couple of days.

In her blog Tatsiana says that the main reasons for the negative response are that she is not married, has already graduated from the university and that the consulate employees fear that she will not come back to the country after the 6day photo shoot.

In Belarus we often complain about the visa fee being too high, about long waiting times as well as numerous documents we need to collect to apply even for a short visit to our neighbors in the EU. And it is a blessing to have a friendly organization or a person behind the boarder who can issue an invitation to facilitate the process. It makes Tatsiana’s case even more disappointing and representative at the same time.

The model managed to overcome thousands of competitors around the world and win a global contest. But not even an invitation from a global apparel company to a photo shoot within a global campaign to a well known model (who often travels to the EU by the way) was good enough to secure a visa.

Interestingly enough Tatsiana’s visa problem coincided with the launch of a VISA-FREE coalition of Belarusian NGOs and think tanks and the model had to demonstrate something very different from Fall/Winter collection.

This example demonstrates once again that the population of the last dictatorship in Europe is kept in isolation not only by the regime within the boarders of Belarus but also by the visa barriers outside it.