He will tell us about the schemes for financing destructive activities, plans for Belarus and the promises of “donors”…He will tell us about the crimes committed in the east of Ukraine by volunteer battalions, in which this passenger, according to his own confessions, is involved-the photos from his phone have already been presented to the media” ( Belta, May 27). Valery Belsky, an assistant to President Alyaksandr Lukashenka, previewed Protasevich’s interview one week earlier, writing that Protasevich would “turn inside out the dirty laundry of runaway collaborators, whose livelihood is sustained by neighboring countries. Much of what was not aired is subject to investigation, according to the interviewer Marat Markov, whose subtle and at times smarmy style, far detached from that of cookie-cutter ideological crusaders, created a semblance of objectivity. This 96-minute-long interview was extracted from four-and-a-half-hour of footage. Soon after enrolling at the Belarusian State University’s journalism faculty in Misk, Protasevich was expelled, according to Euroradio, an international radio station where he had worked from September 2018 to November 2019.On June 3, Belarusian TV showed an interview with Roman Protasevich, captured by Belarusian intelligence services after the forceful landing of the RyanAir aircraft en route from Athens to Vilnius ( YouTube, June 3 EDM, May 24). He later worked as a photographer for Belarusian media and was a recipient of the Vaclav Havel Journalism Fellowship in 2017-2018, an award for aspiring independent journalists named after the late Czech dissident-turned-president. They threatened to accuse me of unsolved murders.”ĭuring the interrogation, he said, Belarusian security service officers, still named the KGB as in Soviet times, demanded his passwords to the online groups. “I urinated blood for three days afterwards. “They hit me in the kidneys and liver,” Protasevich, then a student, said at the time. One group was called “We are sick of this Lukashenko”. He was arrested on several occasions, including in 2012 – aged 17 – for running two anti-Lukashenko groups on the Russia-based social networking site, Vkontakte. Protasevich began as a digital activist in his teens. Lukashenko, a former collective farm manager, has ruled Belarus with an iron fist since 1994, a year before Protasevich was born. Since March this year, Protasevich had been working for a different Telegram channel, Belamova. Now my name is on the same list with the guys from ISIS. The KGB of Belarus put me on the list of terrorists. Translation: I am officially recognised as a terrorist. Yes, this is not a joke. Terror offences can carry the death penalty in Belarus, where capital punishment remains legal. Protasevich was accused of “terrorist” activities, while the Nexta Telegram channels and its logo were labelled as “extremist” and ordered to be blocked by Belarusian authorities. The accusations carry a punishment of more than 12 years in prison. In November 2020, Belarus launched a probe against Protasevich and Nexta’s co-founder Stsiapan Putsila for allegedly disrupting social order and inciting social hatred. Later, he had relocated to the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, where political leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, regarded by the Belarusian opposition as the real winner of the disputed election, had also sought refuge. In January 2020, he reportedly sought asylum. Protasevich, who feared being arrested, fled for Poland in 2019. With close to two million subscribers on Telegram, Nexta Live and its sister channel Nexta played a key role in steering and coordinating protesters last year, when internet access was often blocked and independent media were heavily restricted. The 26-year-old co-founded and edited the Poland-based online news service, Nexta, which broadcast footage of the mass protests via the Telegram messenger app. The country was rocked by mass anti-government demonstrations in the wake of the vote that led to the detention of thousands, of whom dozens received jail terms, according to human rights groups. The Belarusian president was awarded a sixth term in last August’s disputed election that opposition figures say was rigged. The news led to international condemnation with some European leaders calling the move a “hijacking” as the bloc was set on Monday to discuss toughening existing sanctions against Belarus, imposed over President Alexander Lukashenko’s crackdown on opposition protesters last year. Roman Protasevich was on a plane flying from Greece to Lithuania on Sunday when the flight was suddenly diverted to Minsk, the Belarusian capital, where he was arrested.
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