Belarus Joins the Ranks of Somalian Pirates

European leaders are taking steps to cut off air connections with Belarus and barring airlines from flying over the country after its leaders forced a commercial jet to land and arrested a dissident journalist.

21st-Century Dictator Alexander Lukashenko executed an audacious power play, setting a fearsome precedent for journalists and political opponents, who now must fear flying through the airspace of repressive regimes, even if they are moving from one free capital to another.  The Ryanair plane was nearing Vilnius, Lithuania, before Belarusian authorities turned it around, forced it to land in their capital, Minsk, and arrested journalist Roman Protasevich, the founder of an opposition media outlet.

Timothy Snyder, author of "On Tyranny", wrote eloquently on the issue: "No matter how important you are, it is unlikely that a dictator has scrambled a fighter plane to force down a passenger flight so that he can arrest you.  This just happened to the young journalist Roman Protasevich.  His flight from one city in the European Union to another . . . was hijacked by the Belarusian state, forced to the ground by a false bomb warning and a MiG escort.  Protasevich and his girlfriend Sofia Sapega were arrested.

"Protasevich is important because he told the truth about his own country.  Last August the Belarusian dictator, Alexander Lukashenko, sought to stage yet another fake electoral victory.  His usual tactic of disqualifying and arresting opponents was not working.  The wife of one of his opponents ran against him, and almost certainly won.  After Lukashenko announced a victory anyway Belarusians protested peacefully in very large numbers for months. Protasevich at the time worked for NEXTA, a Telegram channel that provided Belarusians with the facts about what was happening in their own country."

"Does history happen if no one is there to report it?  Foreign journalists were banned from Belarus, and so NEXTA, along with a few Russian independent reporters, Ukranian journalists and a Polish writer, was also among the few sources for people abroad who wanted to learn about the democratic movement."

"Democracy is about rule by the people, and it depends on our awareness and confidence that people around the world care about it.  Democracy rises and falls as an international phenomenon.  A huge democratic movement in Belarus, in a place that seemed consigned to dictatorship, is an inspiration for others around the world."

"That people like to vote and have their votes counted is a dangerous truth for most of the world's governments.  For Putin's regime in neighboring Russia, in particular, the spectacle of a neighboring country that wanted clean elections seemed like a terrible threat."

"Protasevich could now face the death penalty in Belarus.  The state terrorism organized to silence one person reminds us just how important reporters are.  Without the words and the images they provide us, we have no chance of getting to the truth about oligarchy, war, and elections, or about any issue that really matters.  They may use technology skillfully, as Protasevich does, but no technology can replace them.  There are far too few of them, and  each one is precious.  We should support them everywhere, abroad and at home."

"Reporters are the heroes of our time, in eastern Europe and everywhere else.  Watching the risks they take and the price they pay, we should be ashamed to have any association with anyone who would say that reporters are "enemies of the people."  Reporters are the friends of the people.  In fact, they are just about the only friends that we the people have."