Home International Airlines shun Belarus after plane ‘hijacking’, opposition leader says journalist tortured

Airlines shun Belarus after plane ‘hijacking’, opposition leader says journalist tortured

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International outrage mounting after Belarus forced down a jetliner and arrested a dissident journalist who was on board.

People hold paper planes during a protest against the detention of a Belarusian blogger, Roman Protasevich, who was detained as a Ryanair plane that he was on, en route from Athens to Vilnius, was forced to land in Minsk on Sunday. Picture: Dawid Zuchowicz/Agencja Gazeta/via Reuters

KYIV/VILNIUS – Airlines shunned Belarus’ air space on Tuesday and Belarusian planes faced a possible ban from Europe as international outrage mounted over Minsk forcing down a jetliner and arresting a dissident journalist who was on board.

A video released overnight showed 26-year-old Roman Protasevich confessing to having organised anti-government demonstrations. On Sunday he was pulled off a flight from Greece to Lithuania forced down in the Belarusian capital Minsk.

Belarusian blogger Roman Protasevich is seen in a pre-trial detention facility, as he says, in Minsk, Belarus on Monday in this still image taken from video. Picture: Telegram@Zheltyeslivy/Reuters TV/via Reuters

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the video made for”distressing viewing” and Belarus would face consequences. Exiled opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya said it proved Protasevich had been tortured.

“He said that he was treated lawfully, but he’s clearly beaten and under pressure. There is no doubt that he was tortured. He was taken hostage,” she told a news conference in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius.

Belarus did not immediately comment on the torture allegation but has consistently denied abusing detainees. Rights groups have documented hundreds of cases of what they describe as abuse and forced confessions during a crackdown on pro-democracy activists since last year.

France and Ireland have described the incident as piracy. On Tuesday Nato Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg called it a “state hijacking”.

Belarusian state media have reported that President Alexander Lukashenko personally ordered the flight to be intercepted. Belarus says it was responding to a bomb scare that later proved to be a false alarm. The UN agency ICAO has said the incident may have violated the foundational treaty governing international civil aviation, the 1944 Chicago Convention.

Protasevich and a 23-year-old student travelling with him were arrested, and three other people disembarked the flight in Minsk, suspected by Western countries of being spies involved in the operation. They were interviewed on Belarus state TV, which identified them as two Belarusians and a Greek. All three said they had asked to disembark because they planned to travel to Minsk anyway once the plane reached Vilnius.

European Union leaders at a summit on Monday called for airlines based in the 27-member bloc to halt flights over Belarusian air space, which is along a major corridor connecting Europe and Asia and earns hard currency from overflight rights.

Lufthansa, KLM, SAS, Air France, LOT and Singapore Airline swere among carriers that announced they would stop flying over Belarus.

The EU leaders also directed officials to draw up unspecified new sanctions against Belarus, and to work out a way to ban Belarusian airlines from the bloc’s skies.

Belarus’ neighbour, Ukraine, also announced a ban on flights to or from Belarus, and on its own airlines using Belarusian air space. That could mean land-locked Belarus could soon be reached by air only over its eastern border with close ally Russia.

“If we let this go, tomorrow Alexander Lukashenko will go further and do something even more arrogant, more cruel,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said in a statement.

VIDEOTAPED ‘CONFESSION’

Lukashenko, whose security services crushed months of pro-democracy demonstrations last year after an election opponents said was rigged, has so far shrugged off Western sanctions, which mostly consist of blacklists barring various officials from travelling or doing business in the United States and EU.

Politicians in the West have called for tougher measures. But they have failed to influence the behaviour of Lukashenko, who enjoys unwavering financial and security support from Russia.

Moscow denied suggestions by Western politicians that it may have assisted its ally Belarus in the operation. Russia has also accused Western countries of hypocrisy, noting a Bolivian presidential plane was diverted to Austria in 2013 after reports it carried US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden.

During Lukashenko’s crackdown on dissent, nearly all opposition figures have been driven into exile or jailed, many on charges of organising demonstrations, which the government describes as terrorism.

In the video released overnight, Protasevich can be seen seated at a desk in a dark hooded sweatshirt.

“I can state that I don’t have any health issues, including diseases of the heart or any other organs. Police officers are treating me properly and according to the law,” he says. “Also, I now continue to co-operate with the investigation and have confessed to organising mass protests in Minsk.”

Protasevich’s father said he believes his son was forced in the which was video posted online to admit guilt and appeared to have a broken nose.

Appearing on several channels of the Telegram messaging app on Monday, Protasevich, 26, acknowledged playing a role in organising mass disturbances in Minsk last year.

His social media feed from exile has been one of the last remaining independent outlets for news about the country since a mass crackdown on dissent last year.

To his father, Dzmitry Protasevich, the video comments on Monday seemed to be a result of coercion.

“It’s likely his nose is broken, because the shape of it has changed and there’s a lot of powder on it. All of the left side of his face has powder,” the elder Protasevich told Reuters in an interview in Russian late on Monday from Wroclaw, Poland, where he and his wife live.

“It’s not his words, it’s not his intonation of speech. He is acting very reserved and you can see he is nervous,” Protasevich said of his son. “And it’s not his pack of cigarettes on the table – he doesn’t smoke these. So I think he was forced.”

The father added: “My son cannot admit to creating the mass disorders, because he just didn’t do any such thing.”

– REUTERS

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