Who is the journalist who has the dictator of Belarus on the ropes

A dissident “confesses” in front of the cameras to having committed a crime with which he has nothing to do. Typical of dictatorships. In this case, that of Belarus, a former Soviet republic located in Eastern Europe. The guy on the screen is Roman Protasevich, 26-year-old journalist, accused of terrorism and incitement to violence by Aleksandr Lukashenko’s regime. The audience is global. Protasevich was kidnapped while traveling from Greece to Lithuania on a scheduled Ryanair airline flight. When the plane passed through Belarusian airspace, it was warned from the Minsk control tower that there was a bomb threat on board and that it had to deviate from its course for an emergency landing. In case the pilot has any doubts, They sent a MIG29 fighter plane to “escort” him. When the craft landed and the hatch opened, four Belarusian secret policemen entered the plane to arrest Roman Protasevich. We no longer spoke of the bomb.

The next day, the video appeared on social media. His father, Dzmitry, who lives in Moscow, told Reuters that her son’s nose looked broken, “because his shape has changed”, and that the way of speaking is not natural. “It’s not his words, it’s not his intonation, you do something against your will, and you can see he’s nervous, ”he commented. “My son cannot admit that he created the massive disorders, because he did not do such a thing.” In the video, Protasevich’s face is scarred and bruised, suggesting that authorities subjected him to “Torture and other ill-treatment” before recording the alleged confession, Amnesty International spokesperson Alexander Artemyev told the Washington Post. It was only 29 seconds of recording. And with that, the regime believes it has already shown the world that what it has done is justified.

After that, Roman Protasevich has disappeared again. Belarus has a reputation for “using intimidation and coercion to force political prisoners to confess.” This is clearly stated in the State Department’s report on human rights in Eastern Europe. Opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya was also forced to appear last year reading a script in a video calling on her supporters to refrain from attending anti-government protests. When he managed to go into exile in Lithuania, Tikhanovskaya made it clear that he had to do so because they threatened to kill his whole family. “I have no doubt that Protasevich had been tortured and was under pressure when the video was recorded,” he said from Vilnus. Subject matter expert Jennifer Mathers from Aberystwyth University in Wales analyzed the video. His conclusion: “is part of a longer historical pattern dating back to the Soviet era of demand a false confession, especially when there is no real evidence to support a conviction ”. And he added that “the idea that someone who has devoted his professional life to the pro-democracy movement in Belarus, at enormous personal risk, freely confesses to the security services is not very credible.” US President Joe Biden isn’t buying the jester either. “It seems to have been done under duress”, he said in a statement in which he also called for the immediate release of Protasevich. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson tweeted that the video “is a deeply scary sight”, adding that “Belarusian actions will have consequences”.

Along with another dissident, Stispan Putsila, Protasevich organized the network television channel to denounce atrocities committed by Belarusian police during pro-democracy protests last year. Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets of Minsk and other cities to protest against the fraud organized by Lukashenko to win the August elections and stay in power as he has been doing since 1994. Shortly after, the young journalist had to go into exile in Greece, and from there he continued his broadcasts for the Nexta channel.

Protasevich has resisted the tyranny of his country since he was 16, when he witnessed what he described as “disgusting” brutality of the Lukashenko government. Thus began a personal journey that would transform a talented student at a scientific institute in Minsk into an avowed enemy of a government called “the last real dictatorship in the heart of Europe”.

He grew up in a suburb of Minsk, in one of those anonymous Soviet-era concrete skyscrapers. His father was an army officer and his mother taught mathematics at a military academy. He won a prize in a science competition in Russia and, paradoxically, the dictatorship gave him a scholarship to study at a prestigious institute. He stayed there until his 10th year and was detained by police as he sat on a park bench with a friend watching one of the calls. “Applause protests”, in which a crowd applauded to demonstrate its opposition to the government, without uttering any forbidden words and thus avoiding arrest. “For the first time, I saw all the filth that is going on in our country”, he said in a 2011 video posted to YouTube. “Just as an example: five huge OMON policemen, the riot police, beat several women. A mother with her son was thrown into a police van. It was disgusting. After that, everything fundamentally changed ”.

He was expelled from the institute and his mother was forced to resign from her teaching post. After a few months, he was able to finish high school at a local school. “It was this incident, this injustice, this insult, which led him to active dissent,” her mother Natalia explained in an interview. Protasevich studied journalism at Belarusian State University, but again encountered problems with the authorities and was again expelled. Unable to complete his studies, he worked as Freelance journalist for various opposition trend publications. Often detained and imprisoned for short periods, he decided to settle in Poland, where he worked for 10 months in Warsaw as part of the Nexta team, disseminating videos, leaked documents and critical information about Lukashenko. Convinced that his work would have a greater impact if he was inside Belarus, he returned in 2019. The dictator was already campaigning for the elections the following year and the pressure on dissidents was very strong. The day he learned that his colleague Vladimir Chudentsov had been arrested, he packed some personal belongings in a backpack and left for Warsaw. A few hours later, the police went to look for him at his home and threatened the parentsIf you don’t bring your child back, you are dead. The next day they joined Roman in Poland.

When Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the main opposition candidate in the August elections, was forced into exile in Lithuania, Protasevich immediately joined her to work in the press section. It was then that he caught the particular attention of the regime. A judge accused him of “Promote terrorism” and “organize demonstrations to violate social order”. The charges he was kidnapped on this week. In your country already Compare Protasevich to Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi dissident journalist assassinated at his country’s consulate in Turkey.

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