Belarus use of military jet to nab journalist shows new world order

Most authoritarian regimes are watching the outcome of the Belarus interception of the Ryanair flight with an armed fighter aircraft to see what will happen.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko attends a meeting with Chairman of the Board of the Eurasian Economic Commission Mikhail Myasnikovich in Minsk, Belarus November 30, 2020. (photo credit: MAXIM GUCHEK/BELTA/HANDOUT VIA REUTERS)
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko attends a meeting with Chairman of the Board of the Eurasian Economic Commission Mikhail Myasnikovich in Minsk, Belarus November 30, 2020.
(photo credit: MAXIM GUCHEK/BELTA/HANDOUT VIA REUTERS)
A Ryanair flight from Athens to Vilnius was intercepted by the Belarus air force on Sunday because Minsk sought to apprehend a journalist traveling on the commercial flight and Russian and to Belarus spokesmen have praised the operation, who view it as another instance of standing up to Western democracies.
The Belarusians scrambled the MiG 29 fighter jet to indicate what turned out to be a false bomb alert. The Boeing 737 belonging to Irish airline was forced to land and a journalist thought to be sympathetic to the country's opposition, who was among the passengers, was detained.
For their part, Western democracies haven’t done anything in response and initial statements by the airlines and EU didn’t even mention that people had been taken off the plane.
This is today’s new world order. Journalists, dissidents and critics who reside in democracies can be rendered and disappeared at the orders of various authoritarian states. Whether it is Turkey kidnapping or targeting people in Europe, Iran ordering assassinations of dissidents in Europe, civilian airliners being shot down by Iran or rebels in the Donbas, or journalists being nabbed, there are fewer and fewer protections for journalists these days.
If once authoritarian regimes might have thought twice about abducting journalists and even released them to Western countries, it is now the opposite. Critics are hunted. People are not safe in Europe or even in the air. They can be poisoned on the streets of the UK, kidnapped by Turkey and disappear and stabbed or blown up on orders from Tehran.
There was no pretense that Ryanair Flight 4978 wouldn’t simply obey Belarus, even though it was on descent to its Lithuanian destination. It was diverted to Minsk with no explanation given. Passengers were taken off, and several disappeared.
During the 1976 Entebbe kidnapping, the heroic Air France crew had remained behind with the kidnapped hostages. In this case, the flight simply departed without the people who had been taken away. A statement by the airline didn’t mention any missing passengers.
Today you can disappear without a trace, and nothing will be done for you by democratic states. This is how it works today.
One man “said he could not be sure if Roman Protasevich’s companion, who took the laptop and phone, had also been detained in Minsk, but there appeared to be more empty seats on the final Minsk-Vilnius journey than when it took off from Athens,” Reuters reported.
Today, there are fewer people like Michel Bacos, the captain of hijacked Air France Flight 193. He stayed with the passengers who were forcibly taken off. He passed away in 2019. Airlines now let their passengers be seized without even mentioning it.

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“Unless [there are] massive consequences for this RyanAir/Belarus deal, we will see copycats,” aviation expert Tyler Rogoway wrote in an online post. “Want to get your hands on a dissident or person of state propaganda value? If they ever pass over your airspace, you now have a way to grab them. This cannot stand.”
Most authoritarian regimes are watching the outcome of the Belarus grounding of the Ryanair flight – by using armed combat aircraft – to see what will happen. Democracies may now know that airlines flying from one democracy to another over dictatorships can have their flights diverted and passengers shaken down or taken away without question or repercussions.
The praise that has been issued from authoritarian countries generally reflects a belief that Western democracies won’t do much to protect people.
In addition, it raises questions about how and why foreign intelligence services are generally able to act so freely in democratic European states, following and tracking dissidents and maybe even getting a hold of passenger manifests on airlines.