{"id":27670,"date":"2021-05-24T08:48:03","date_gmt":"2021-05-24T05:48:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/?p=27670"},"modified":"2021-05-24T08:48:03","modified_gmt":"2021-05-24T05:48:03","slug":"state-terrorism-belarus-hijacks-journalists-plane","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/state-terrorism-belarus-hijacks-journalists-plane\/","title":{"rendered":"State terrorism \u2013 Belarus hijacks journalist\u2019s plane"},"content":{"rendered":"

A huge international row broke tonight over the forced U-turn of an internal EU flight from Athens to Vilnius which was then escorted by a Mig-29 fighter jet to land in the Belarusian capital, Minsk. There exiled\u00a0journalist Roman Protasevich<\/a>, 26, was immediately seized by police. The other 122 passengers arrived more than seven hours late in Lithuania.<\/p>\n

The hijack puts Belarus President\u00a0Alexander Lukashenko<\/a>\u00a0on a fresh collision course with the EU, which in February\u00a0renewed sanctions<\/a>\u00a0against him and his senior officials for the blatant\u00a0rigging of his re-election<\/a>\u00a0last August, violence against protesters, and harassment or imprisonment of journalists.<\/p>\n

European Council President Charles Michel says the\u00a0International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) must investigate.<\/a><\/p>\n

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen tweeted earlier that \u201cany violation of international air transport rules must bear consequences\u201d, while Lithuanian President Gitanas Naus\u0117da insisted that NATO and EU allies respond immediately to \u201cthe threat to international civil aviation posed by the Belarusian regime.\u201d<\/p>\n

The issue would be raised at an EU summit in Brussels tomorrow, he said: \u201cThe regime is behind the abhorrent action. I demand to free Roman Protasevich urgently!\u201d Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki called the hijacking \u201can unprecedented act of state terrorism. It cannot go unpunished.\u201d\u00a0 Poland has previously rejected an extradition request by Minsk.<\/p>\n

AEJ Secretary-General Edward Steen said: \u201cIf Europe as a whole does not finally react now, then when? We are concerned for the very many journalists locked up for months now in Belarus, with more\u00a0raids, arrests, and phony charges against the TUT.BY online<\/a>\u00a0media outlet only a few days ago. Roman faces up to 15 years in prison, maybe worse. Is that a price he or any other journalists must pay for simply doing their jobs?<\/p>\n

There had supposedly been a bomb threat, but Lietuvos oro uostai, the operator of Lithuanian airports, said the landing had been \u201cbecause of a conflict between a passenger and a crewmember.\u201d The diversion of the Ryanair flight was in fact personally ordered by Belarus\u2019 dictator Alexander Lukashenko, Belarusian state media confirmed.<\/p>\n

The Dublin-based airline said the plane\u2019s crew were \u201cnotified by Belarus (Air Traffic Control) of a potential security threat on board and were instructed to divert to the nearest airport, Minsk\u201d. The flight path,\u00a0visible on the Flightradar24 website<\/a>, shows the plane was nearer to Vilnius than Minsk when it turned.<\/p>\n

Roman Protasevich was editor-in-chief of the influential sister Telegram channels Nexta and Nexta Live, with an audience of almost two million. These served as a channel for the large-scale protests against Lukashenko\u2019s re-election last year, and exposure of police brutality. Lukashenko countered by saying he would \u201crather be killed\u201d than hold fresh elections.<\/p>\n

Protasevich had been in Athens to cover a visit by\u00a0Svetlana Tikhanovskaya<\/a>, a candidate in the 2020 presidential election who declared herself the country\u2019s leader-in-exile after the fraudulent election.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe regime forced the landing @Ryanair plane in Minsk,\u201d she wrote in a series of tweets. \u201cRoman Protasevich (\u2026 ) faces the death penalty in Belarus. We demand immediate release of Roman, @ICAO investigation, and sanctions against Belarus\u2026Lukashenko\u2019s regime endangered the lives of passengers onboard the plane. From now \u2013 no one flying over Belarus can be secure. International reaction needed!\u201d<\/p>\n

Protasevich told colleagues earlier on Sunday he had been followed while travelling to Athens airport. A man speaking Russian speaker had attempted to photograph his documents, he wrote to colleagues.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was next in line at the document check and just turned around and walked away,\u201d he said. \u201cFor some reason, he also tried to secretly photograph my documents.\u201d Protasevich has not been heard from since his arrest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A huge international row broke tonight over the forced U-turn of an internal EU flight from Athens to Vilnius which was then escorted by a Mig-29 fighter jet to land in the Belarusian capital, Minsk. There exiled\u00a0journalist Roman Protasevich, 26, was immediately seized by police. The other 122 passengers arrived more than seven hours late […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27668,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,967],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-featured","category-positions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27670\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}