No court decision needed to ban conscripts evading the draft from leaving the country

A draft committee’s decision is sufficient to ban those dodging the service from traveling abroad, the European Radio for Belarus has learned. This is how they will punish those who have not turned out on time at the military enlistment offices. No formal court ruling is required in this case.

The European Radio for Belarus reported earlier that the Defense Ministry together with the other government agencies is an active supplier of names to the national database which registers the citizens banned from leaving the country. While the Justice Ministry feeds the names of the people banned from traveling abroad by courts and the Interior Ministry and the Prosecutor’s Office feeds the lists complied by investigators, the military draft committees do not even have to rely on courts. They make decisions on their own, according to Defense Ministry spokesman Vyachaslau Ramenchyk.

He told the European Radio for Belarus: “Decisions are taken by draft boards set up by the local governing bodies. A draft board is not a Defense Ministry’s body but it also includes the representatives from the military enlistment offices”.

However, draft boards will first have to carry out an investigation and prove that a conscript deliberately avoids meetings with a representative of the draft board.

“It doesn’t mean that a conscript will be entered into the travel-ban database because he has not received the call-up papers in person once . Only after his evasion is proved as a deliberate behavior, a relevant decision will be taken by the board”.

Those dodging the draft will be searched for both at home and at work using the police if needed. It is hard to understand when draft boards lose their patience and make a decision to ban a dodger from crossing the border, but they don’t need courts to justify that. Then, they will send their decision to the Defense Ministry to be automatically forwarded to the Interior and border guards.

Defense Ministry spokesman has declined to reveal the exact number of draft dodgers who have already been banned from leaving the country, saying it is classified information. But he said that these people could be still counted by fingers.

“As of today, there are very few of them. One can’t count even in dozens or hundreds”.

If you want to be removed from the black list, you will have to turn up at the conscription office and do your duty.