Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
THERE ARE GROWING fears that journalist and opposition activist Roman Protasevich, who was taken off a diverted Ryanair plane yesterday, has been tortured since his detention in Belarus.
The 26-year-old was arrested along with his girlfriend after the plane was forced to divert to Minsk while over Belarusian airspace.
The plane was headed to Vilnius from Athens and the crew was told the diversion was due to a bomb threat. Accompanied by a Belarusian fighter jet, it landed in the capital Minsk.
The move has been condemned by European leaders, including Taoiseach Micheál Martin who described the Belarusian government’s defence of their actions as “nonsense”.
‘Sick of this’
Protasevich, who had been living in exile between Poland and Lithuania, began his digital activism in his teens.
A student at the time, he was arrested in 2012 aged just 17 for running two groups on the Russian-based social networking site Vkontakte against Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.
One of them was called “We are sick of this Lukashenko” – the former collective farm manager who has ruled Belarus with an iron fist since 1994, a year before Protasevich was born.
“They hit me in the kidneys and liver,” Protasevich said at the time.
I urinated blood for three days afterwards. They threatened to accuse me of unsolved murders.
During the interrogation, he said, officers from Belarus’s security service, still named the KGB as in Soviet times, were demanding his passwords to the online groups.
Protest details
He later worked as a photographer for Belarusian media and was the recipient of a Vaclav Havel Journalism Fellowship in 2017-2018 – an award for aspiring independent journalists named after the late Czech dissident turned president.
Protasevich left Belarus in 2019 after he started working for the highly influential pro-opposition Telegram channel Nexta (‘Somebody’ in Belarusian).
He later became editor-in-chief at the channel, which currently has more than 1.2 million subscribers.
The channel had a role in organising the anti-Lukashenko protests by sharing with its followers details on meeting times and dates.
‘First terrorist journalist’
Living between Poland and Lithuania, both hubs for Belarusian exiles, he has since become the editor of the channel BGM – an acronym in Russian meaning ‘Smart Belarus’ – which has 260,000 subscribers.
The 26-year-old’s girlfriend, Sofia Sapega, who was detained with him, is a law student at the European Humanities University (EHU) in Vilnius.
Protasevich covered the 2020 presidential election campaign in which opposition challenger Svetlana Tikhanovskaya took on Lukashenko.
Unprecedented mass protests broke out after Lukashenko declared victory once again and the authorities responded with violence.
Belarus issued a warrant for Protasevich’s arrest in November over his work for Nexta, declaring that he was “involved in terrorist activity”.
On his Twitter profile, he mockingly describes himself as “history’s first terrorist journalist”.
Terror offences can carry the death penalty in Belarus, which still carries out capital punishment.
After the plane was diverted and coming in to land in Minsk on Sunday, passengers overheard him saying that “he was facing the death penalty”.
His latest tweet on 16 May was about photographing Tikhanovskaya’s visit to Athens – the city where the Ryanair flight left from on its way to Vilnius.
- © AFP 2021 with reporting by Michelle Hennessy.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
This needs a full on response from the EU. Serious sanctions must be put in place.
@Gregory Pym: The always excellent Glenn Greenwald on the similarities between this and the Snowden incident in 2013:
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/as-anger-toward-belarus-mounts-recall
@bread of heaven: While that is true, you are also engaging in What-About-ery as well. That’s a Cold War era Russian propaganda tactic to create a sense that there is no objective morality, which is in high fashion on the Conservative/Right Wing media, e.g. Sean Hannity bringing up Bill Clinton (“Do you think he was a predator”) in response to the accusations against GOP candidate Roy Moore. How about both are worthy of criticism, but the up to the minute story was Roy Moore.
@bread of heaven: Exposing hypocrisy is branded “whataboutery” by those who wish to ignore it.
@Kieran Woods: And taking someone’s comment out of context and ignoring sections of it (including the very first part) is typical of conservative and right wing leaning commenters here. How did I ignore that it was not true. You are putting words in my mouth, while committing in print that you misrepresented what I said. It’s time to stop regurgitating a very limited set of tactics and start arguing on the basis of what someone actually put in a comment.
@David A. Murray: Correction: How did I ignore that it WAS TRUE. That’s the last time I attempt a double negative here.
@bread of heaven: I wouldn’t have thought Tommy Robinson would have the wherewithal to arrange for a Ryanair plane to be grounded so he could apprehend one of his critics, but I see your point. However, Robinson is total nobody whereas Lukashenko actually does have some actual real world influence, so I wouldn’t have thought they were in the same league.
A masterstroke by Lukashenko. Not only had the situation in Belarus faded from the media spotlight, but now I know not only about this journalist and his partner, but I have been provided with enough details to find independent coverage of the situation by Belarusian exiled citizens. That’s the kind of sophisticated long term political shrewdness that will serve him well. [And my laptop's sarcasm card has over-heated again. It's only rated for level 2.35 sarcasm]
When incidents like this are discussed and condemned by EU leaders for example, I am shocked by the lack of equality and of similar applications of international law. In the summer of 2013 France and Spain closed their airspace to a flight carrying the president of a sovereign country, the plane was rerouted by EU air traffic controllers and was forced to land in Vienna where it was searched. The reason it was searched was that there was a suspicion that Edward Snowden was on the flight and being offered sanctuary. We all know who ordered this to take place. EU leaders were compliant and totally silent. So why can some countries force planes to land in order to detain someone on a wanted list, and others can not? If one stands up to condemn one country or political leader for actions, then one should do it when others perform similar actions.
This story is bananas! Could you imagine seeing a Mig or a Sukhoi out the window your Ryanair plane?
A noticeable lack of comments on here. I wonder why?
@billy bound: People afraid of their next flight being diverted to Belarus…
@billy bound: Noticeable lack of comments here because according to the Belarusian authorities Hamas planted the alledged bomb—–We don’t criticize Hamas in this country!
@John Mc Donagh: there was no bomb and there are dozens more comments on the other article about it so your comment really makes zero sense.
And we have an Irishman being paid no doubt by this regime to be their mouth piece here locally
Morales plane was forced to land and searched. In 2016 Ukraine also forced a plane to return to Kiev so that politically active people were to be arrested. In 2012 Turkey forced a plane from Moscow to Damascus to land. In 2019 Kiev also made a plane flying form Moscow to Istanbul to land seeking to arrest people (non-Ukrainian citizens).
Tom you don’t seem to know very much and you fail to see the real question. Do countries have rights to detain criminals who are flying within their airspace. Belarus considers this guy Roman. P to be a criminal. Maybe the airlines need to take responsibility for transporting people on wanted lists within the air space of countries where people are under investigation. My issue is with the hypocrisy of the EU and USA who only make noise about that which suits their own political motives. International law and justice is very one sided. If you consider Snowden a fugitive you probably agree with the UK and USA on Assange also and should obviously then support the rights of Belarus to arrest a criminal within their own airspace. I have no idea where the bomb story originated from and whether the arrest was the reason or a consequence – lets see what investigations clarify.
have your say