Belarus’s dictator isn’t winning. He’s desperate.
The skyjacking of a dissident journalist over Belarus on Sunday was a brutal action with a simple message to opponents of dictatorial President Alexander Lukashenko: We can get you anywhere.
Are the thugs winning? Sometimes, it may appear so, but I’d draw a different lesson from Sunday’s forced landing of a Ryanair flight in Minsk and the imprisonment there of journalist Roman Protasevich. Even against such outrageous intimidation, the barrier of fear is breaking in Belarus. The thugs are getting desperate. The opposition persists — and after Sunday’s crude assault, it may grow.
The European Union responded with tough sanctions a day after the Ryanair plane was forced down, beginning a process that will probably block E.U. air travel to and from Belarus. The Belarusian dictator, derided by the opposition as “the cockroach” after clinging to power since 1994, is more isolated. Even Russian President Vladimir Putin is said to dislike him.
The persistent protests in Belarus get little attention, but they’re inspiring. Dissident blogger Sergei Tikhanovsky announced a year ago that he planned to challenge Lukashenko in last August’s presidential elections. When he was arrested two days later, his wife, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, stepped up and ran on her own.
Tikhanovskaya ran a rousing campaign and claimed she won in August with 60 to 70 percent of the vote. Lukashenko, the perennial incumbent, insisted he had triumphed with 80 percent and promptly arrested all the members of the coordination council the opposition had formed to manage the transfer of power.
The protests began, tens of thousands in the streets, waving the red-and-white banner of the opposition. Huge crowds of Belarusian patriots faced down the security forces, chanting “Stop the cockroach!” Lukashenko arrested an estimated 35,000 people.
The protests continued, but more carefully. Displaying the opposition’s colors in the streets could mean immediate arrest, so Belarusians began hanging their laundry in red-and-white patterns or wearing red-and-white socks. Dissident journalist Ihar Losik had been arrested in June 2020, but Protasevich continued a blog called Nexta on the encrypted social media app Telegram. The KGB beat and arrested people, but the young journalists and their followers continued to share the truth.
That’s what led to Sunday’s appalling diversion of the Ryanair jet and Protasevich’s arrest when he landed. The autocratic rulers couldn’t find any other way. It’s the same basic story as the October 2018 murder of dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a Post contributing columnist, by a hit team approved by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Who appears desperate and frightened in these attacks? It’s the thugs, who can’t stop dissenters except by kidnapping them.
Protasevich didn’t get on that flight from Athens to Vilnius, Lithuania, intending to be a martyr. He was a journalist living in exile, traveling from one E.U. city to another. But he was persisting in his job of running his news channel, despite the wave of arrests back home.
One American who has met with Protasevich recently explained: “What I took away is that he is committed to the integrity of the journalistic profession. He’s willing to work in the most dire situation. This isn’t just a hobby for him. It’s a mission to provide information direct to the people.”
The Russian response to the skyjacking from Foreign Ministry spokesman Maria Zakharova was cynical — but essential reading. “It is shocking that the West calls the incident in Belarusian airspace ‘shocking,’” she wrote on Facebook. She cited the forced landing in Austria in 2013 of a Bolivian jet thought to be carrying NSA leaker Edward Snowden. She could have mentioned other cases where the United States tried to force down other civilian flights that were believed to be carrying terrorists.
There’s a battle taking place around the world between autocratic leaders and young activists who want the freedom to speak freely. You can see it in Russia, China, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt — and scores of other countries, most definitely including Belarus.
The Biden administration sees this as a fight to maintain a rules-based order, instead of lawless thugocracy. But if it wants to lead this campaign, the United States can’t be hypocritical. Every bad thing we do as a nation gets copied by nations with fewer scruples. America wages drone warfare against al-Qaeda; Azerbaijan wages it against Armenian fighters in Nagorno-Karabakh; America conducts “extraordinary rendition” of terrorist suspects; Saudi Arabia and Belarus kidnap or murder dissenting journalists.
President Biden wants to contest the authoritarians without a new Cold War. He will set the stage when he meets Putin June 16 in Geneva. Diplomatic sources say he wisely dispensed with some baggage last week by quietly granting a 90-day waiver on sanctions that otherwise would have been imposed against German companies for violating a ban on aiding Russia’s Nord Stream pipeline.
Better to keep the focus for now on our adversaries, rather than picking a fight with Germany, a faithful ally. Here’s a suggestion for Biden when he meets Putin. Wear red and white socks, as a reminder of which side he’s on.
