Detained da Vincis: The Artist Asylum Seekers Trapped in Lithuania

Last summer, 4,000 people seeking asylum arrived in Lithuania and were placed in immigration detention. While the future is uncertain, many are using art to process fear and trauma

“I have seen her paintings and drawings… like Leonardo da Vinci,” says one of the security guards who checks in visitors to the bright blue shipping container in Medininkai. The Lithuanian city borders Belarus and is home to one of five refugee camps across the country. More than 4,000 people have been detained here in precarious conditions since summer 2021.

The paintings are by Anna (not her real name), an Iraqi woman who, along with thousands more, have made the dangerous journey across the forest that divides Lithuania and Belarus.

Most of those arriving here are under 30 and fleeing war and persecution in Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and various African countries. Having crossed the border from Belarus, they were apprehended by Lithuanian State border guards before being detained in foreigners centres. They are not permitted to leave and explore the country or travel to a new home. 

The arrival of the 4,000 people seeking asylum led to the Lithuanian Government declaring a ‘national emergency. “There was no available infrastructure,” the Interior Minister Agnė Bilotaitė, said. “All of it had to be created. It was not easy to find places.”

Unlike daVinci, Anna doesn’t have an easel on which to balance her canvases. Instead, she uses the barbed wire fence that surrounds Kybartai foreigners registration centre – a former prison where the Lithuanian Government accommodates thousands of migrants.

It still looks and feels like a prison with barred windows, a high perimeter wall, and a small square with a single tree in the middle.

The message to those held here is stark. “No one of you will receive asylum and be recognised as a refugee,” Foreign Affairs Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis posted on Facebook, demonstrating the lack of willingness even to consider their individual cases.  “You will have to live in the tent camp until we find a way to send you home.”

It has been seven years since Anna last saw her family. She can’t recall the last time she had a visitor. But today, she receives donated frames, canvases, watercolours and brushes all collected by the Sienos Group, an initiative established last November to support the migrants coming to Lithuania. 

Though their artistic styles vary widely, the ability to connect to the outside world through art is something the detainees helped by the Sienos Group share.

Helping to coordinate the delivery of arts supplies to women like Anna is Ewa, who first got involved with the Sienos Group to support people coming through the Lithuanian-Belarusian border with humanitarian aid, food and clothes.

She quickly realised that the detainees could be supported in other ways – that they had artistic talents that she could help to encourage. She started posting their work on Facebook. Since then, her profile has turned into an online exhibition of their artwork. 

Known in the camp as the “mother of refugees”, Ewa receives requests from detainees to “show my paintings”. Her inbox has become a helpline for many other visual artists living in camps eager to paint and show their work to the world while they are behind the fence.

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A Geopolitical Row

Back in summer 2021, the contested leader of Belarus and Vladimir Putin ally, Alexander Lukashenko, threatened to flood Lithuania “with migrants and drugs”. Many people seeking asylum enter the European Union via Belarus and the countries that border it, having fled places such as Syria and Iraq. 

Because of Lukashenko’s words, the EU viewed the border crossings by refugees from Belarus into member states such as Lithuania and Poland as an act of aggression. In Poland, people seeking asylum were forcefully pushed back into Belarus, sometimes with violence. Those who made it to Lithuania were detained.

Amnesty International accused Lithuania of “arbitrarily detaining thousands of people in militarised centres where they were held in inhumane conditions, tortured and otherwise ill-treated”.

In response, Interior Minister Bilotaitė said: “The context of the situation has not been taken into account because these are not just migration processes and these are not war refugees fleeing from war.” The 1951 Refugee Convention, to which Lithuania is a signatory, does not, however, protect people fleeing war but individuals seeking protection on the basis of persecution because of their race, religion, ethnicity or other characteristics.

“The European Union forced Lithuania to put us in prison to save Germany and Europe,” says Amir, who, like Anna, is from Iraq. He has now been living behind the fence for almost a year. He doesn’t know how long he will be held. 

It’s this legal limbo that can cause so much distress and pain.