The aerial abduction of Roman Protasevich in Belarus
On Sunday, a commercial Ryanair flight from Athens, Greece, to Vilnius, Lithuania, was nearing its destination when it suddenly changed course. The government of Belarus, an Eastern European dictatorship, had intercepted the flight just before it left the country’s airspace and demanded that it make an emergency landing in Minsk, the capital. Some of the passengers feared that the plane had a problem. In fact, it was carrying a problem for the Belarusian regime: a twenty-six-year-old exile named Roman Protasevich, who cofounded a channel on the Telegram app that has been used to coordinate and journalistically cover mass protests against the rule of President Alexander Lukashenko. After the flight landed in Minsk, Protasevich and his girlfriend, Sofia Sapega, who is Russian, were quickly arrested; the other passengers were held for several more hours, one of them told
Journalism rights group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has accused Belarus government of “waging a terrible war” against journalists and freedom of speech, as it lodged an official complaint with the United Nations.
In recent months, amid crackdowns on the frequent protests that have been ongoing following the disputed reelection of President Alexander Lukashenko, journalists have been arrested by police and charged with alleged criminal acts.
Rights groups say this is to stop the coverage of the protests, which have seen unprecedented numbers of people take the streets week after week, calling for free and fair elections and the end of Lukashenko’s rule.