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Alexander Lukashenko
According to state media, Alexander Lukashenko personally authorised the forced downing of a Ryanair plane as it flew over Belarusian airspace. Photograph: Sputnik/Reuters
According to state media, Alexander Lukashenko personally authorised the forced downing of a Ryanair plane as it flew over Belarusian airspace. Photograph: Sputnik/Reuters

Belarus ‘hijacking’ is test for international community

This article is more than 2 years old

Analysis: ‘Air piracy’ is just latest act of Alexander Lukashenko’s brutal campaign against his opponents

Belarus’s president, Alexander Lukashenko, has unleashed a brutal campaign against his opponents. More than 35,000 people have been arrested, thousands have been tortured or abused, and 400 political prisoners are currently behind bars. Earlier this week a 50-year-old opposition activist, Vitold Ashurok, died in a penal colony. The official cause of death was “heart attack”. His widow believes he was murdered.

It is against this dark and repressive backdrop that the extraordinary events of Sunday took place. According to state media, Lukashenko personally authorised the forced downing of a Ryanair plane as it flew over Belarusian airspace between Greece and Lithuania – a real-time hijacking. He even dispatched a MIG-29 fighter jet to ensure the pilot complied after being informed of a fake bomb threat.

The target of Lukashenko’s fury was a 26-year-old passenger and opposition blogger, Roman Protasevich. Protasevich is the co-founder of Nexta, a Telegram channel. Since last August’s presidential election, widely seen as rigged, it has reported on, and coordinated demonstrations against, the Belarus regime. These continue. Like other critics he had left Belarus for exile. And what he must have thought was the safety of the EU.

Protasevich was arrested when his plane landed in Minsk. His Russian girlfriend who was with him, Sofia Sapega, was detained too. Their whereabouts are unknown. The shocking incident has provoked widespread international condemnation and horror. On Monday Ryanair’s chief executive, Michael O’Leary, called it “air piracy”. Foreign ministers have dubbed it in-flight kidnapping, blatant “state terrorism” and sheer thuggery.

The dilemma for western governments is how to respond. According to Andrei Sannikov, a former Belarus presidential candidate imprisoned in 2010, the regime is not merely enacting the worst domestic crackdown in Belarus since its independence from the Soviet Union – beating up its own, as he put it. It poses a grave threat to other countries, he said. Most of the passengers on board – 171 of them – were EU citizens.

Sannikov described Lukashenko’s embattled Moscow-backed government as “absolutely insane”. “Yes, Lukashenko is a psychopath, a dangerous one,” he said. He added: “This is a test for the international community in general. The west has yet to find instruments and tools to deal with him. Maybe the hijacking will trigger something. These are not empty threats. Not even North Korea would do something like this.”

The hijacking raises the nightmarish prospect that Lukashenko may now carry out other special operations against critics living abroad. The head of Belarus’s KGB, Ivan Tsertsel, has promised to eliminate all “traitors to the motherland”. In April his colleague Gen Nikolai Karpenkov, head of internal forces, said participants in peaceful rallies would face “inevitable retribution” and be “treated as terrorists”. State TV has talked of Stalin-style killings.

Just a few hours before his plane was forcibly landed, Protasevich reported he was under surveillance at Athens airport. A Russian-speaking man dressed in a T-shirt and chinos stood behind him during boarding and tried to take photos of his ID, he said. At Minsk four passengers slipped off the plane and disappeared. They appear to be intelligence officers working for Belarus’s KGB. At least two reportedly had Russian passports.

Belarus seizes blogger after 'hijacking' Ryanair flight – video report

If Russia had a role in the hijacking is unclear. Its FSB spy agency recently helped to arrest an opposition activist in Moscow accused of plotting a “coup” against Lukashenko and Russian state media has praised Belarus’s president for his “beautiful” and uncompromising move. The incident, some believe, will further estrange Belarus from Europe, to the Kremlin’s advantage.

Already it has having a chilling effect on other dissidents. Natalia Kaliada, co-founder of the Belarus Free Theatre, was due to meet Protasevich this week. She told the Guardian she spoke with the pilot and airline on Sunday after boarding a flight from London to Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital. “The plane was put on alert. It avoided Belarus airspace. I’ve had multiple death threats since November and December,” she said.

In recent months the mass protests against Lukashenko have diminished. According to Sannikov, however, the regime is weaker than it seems, with Lukashenko reliant on his security forces. Behind the scenes there are defections and suicides, he said. “Lukashenko doesn’t control the state anymore or the economy or government. He’s only meeting with the men in uniform,” he added. “The protests may be less. But hatred of Lukashenko personally is growing. It’s leading to an explosion.”

According to Nigel Gould-Davies, Britain’s former ambassador in Minsk, the EU and UK should consult with the Belarus opposition co-ordinating committee before deciding on possible sanctions. “This isn’t only about Belarus,” he said. “If Belarus gets away with it other countries will likely be emboldened to have a malign interest in getting hold of people who have fled abroad.” Sunday’s events showed Lukashenko’s weakness, he pointed out, noting: “He can’t regain legitimacy.”

For Belarus’s embattled journalistic community, meanwhile, it has been a disastrous period. The country’s biggest non-state media outlet – the website tut.by – was shut down last week, with many of its staff rounded up and arrested. Currently 30 journalists are in prison. They now include Protasevich, who faces charges of organising mass riots and organising group activities which “violate public order”. It is enough to see him jailed for years.

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