Front Burner - A 'hijacking' in Belarus, a dissident arrested

Episode Date: May 26, 2021

After the shocking interception of a commercial flight to arrest a dissident journalist, CBC’s Moscow correspondent explains Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko’s escalating crackdown on opposition.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. It's been called a state-sponsored hijacking. A normal passenger plane flying from Greece to Lithuania, forced to make an emergency landing in Belarus. Old to jail, a prominent dissident journalist.

The international condemnation has been swift, including from Canada. The behavior of the Belarus regime is outrageous, illegal and completely unacceptable. Today, CBC Moscow correspondent Chris Brown breaks down the shocking interception of a commercial flight and what it says about Belarus's strongman president and his escalating crackdown following last summer's election, one that Canada has also called fraudulent. Hey, Chris, thanks so much for making the time today. Great to be back, Jamie. Thanks. So take us back to what happened on Ryanair flight 4978 on Sunday during this seemingly routine commercial flight from Greece to Lithuania. At what point did things start to really go sideways here?

Well, this was, as you say, just a normal flight between two EU countries traveling as it would over several countries to get up to the Baltic states from the Mediterranean. On board was Roman Protasevich. He was a 26-year-old, is a 26-year-old Belarusian, but someone who's been living in exile in Lithuania for the last couple of years because of his political activities. And he had been in Greece at an economics conference with his girlfriend, Sofia Sapega. at an economics conference with his girlfriend, Sofia Sapega. And while they were at that conference, they had met a number of other dissidents, other exiles from Belarus, including the most prominent opposition persons, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya.

They actually posted photographs of them in Greece. So everyone's on their way home, or at least Roman and Sofia are. And then, almost as the plane was actually beginning its descent into Lithuania, apparently there is a call from air traffic control in Minsk. And remember, this plane wasn't going to Minsk. It was just flying over, saying, we received an email that there is a bomb on board your plane and someone wants to blow it up. You are to divert now to Minsk.

For security reasons, we recommend you to land in uniform. Okay, that's it. Understood. So then there's a bit of a pause, and you can hear the discussion between the aircraft pilots and the people on the ground. Give us a minute, please. And it is unusual because at that point they were very, very close to their destination. So the pilots came back and asked... This recommendation to divert to Minsk, where did it come from?

And at which point the air traffic controller in Minsk said... This is our recommendation. It's our recommendation. Now, if you're the pilot and you get this kind of command from air traffic control, you do it. There's not a whole lot of room for discussion. They're telling you that your aircraft is in danger. They're not aware that this might be some secret service operation. So the pilots did as they were told.

They maneuvered their plane and they landed in Minsk a short time later. Right. And I understand a fighter jet was scrambled as well, right? There was a MiG, a brand new one that was sent from Minsk. A bit unclear whether the pilots actually knew that that fighter jet was there or not. We're not sure about that chain of events, but for sure, the Belarusians knew that it was there. And in fact, there is even a fair bit of suggestion, lots of social media discussion in Belarus and comments from the presidential administration that this jet was dispatched by Alexander Lukashenko himself to make sure that this operation went off as planned.

Right. And this is the president of Belarus. We'll talk about him more in a minute. But first, of course, there was no bomb on the plane. So what ended up happening upon landing in Minsk? Well, Roman Protasevich realized very quickly that he was in trouble. He had been declared an extremist, a terrorist, on the same level, if you will, as a member of ISIS. And that's because he was the editor-in-chief of a very prominent social media channel called Nekhta, which means someone in Belarusian. And this had been one of the primary vehicles for organizing massive protests against the Lukashenko government over the last 18 months or so. We were trying to find any new proxy servers and all of them were so popular that they were getting off because of too many people on them. So he knew if he landed in Minsk that he would likely be arrested.

So passengers on board described what happened when the plane touched down, that they say he got up and he tried to give away some of his belongings. Take the luggage and was trying to split the things, like computer, give it to a girlfriend, iPhone or whatever it's called, phone, take to a girlfriend. To his girlfriend who was with him, because he knew at the time what was going to happen. And then they say he was quickly separated from the other passengers as soon as the plane landed and he was taken into custody.

It was very calm. We only saw it maybe by accident that something is going on. It was nothing violent. It was very calm and he was not protesting. Wow. It's just a shocking story to hear this play out. I do want to be really clear here. Commercial flights are not typically intercepted midair, right? In order

to arrest a passenger. Oh no, this does not happen. You know, you can't say it's never happened because there have been incidences where, let's say a private jet carrying someone was ordered to land or that different countries have known maybe a fugitive was on board and steps were taken that way. But again, this was an EU-registered airplane. Ryanair is an Irish company carrying mostly European Union passengers going between two European Union countries. And it was essentially air hijacked by the government of Belarus. And that is why the European Union

and so many countries have been so outraged that, you know, there are these rules, these civil aviation rules that everyone has to follow, or basically the whole system doesn't work. And yet here you have here an air traffic controller usurping that, apparently ordered by Lukashenko himself to declare a false bomb threat to force this plane down onto the ground. And now I wonder if you could tell me more about the person who you mentioned earlier, who may have given this order, President Alexander Lukashenko, who has actually been in power for roughly as long as Protasevich has been alive, since 1994. Right. Well, they call him in some parts of Europe, Europe's last dictator,

because he's been in power for 27 years. That's almost as long as Belarus has been out of the Soviet Union. So he's a strong man. He definitely wields an iron fist in that country. And he's not been afraid to use the military and his secret police, which they still call the KGB in Belarus. They didn't change the name. So he uses terror and all these weapons and tools to try to keepGB in Belarus. They didn't change the name. So he uses terror and all these weapons

and tools to try to keep people in line. But what happened back in 2020 was that after a number of elections, I think six elections or so, people were growing tired of this guy. And I mean, these kinds of authoritarian rules, they always fake the elections just enough to make sure that they win and they get the kind of result they want. But in this case, he had to work really super hard to do it because he was that unpopular. And it was blatantly obvious that he had lost to an opposition candidate. Long lines formed outside polling stations on Sunday. You can tell most are opposition voters by their wristbands. polling stations on Sunday. You can tell most are opposition voters by their wristbands.

As he arrived to vote for himself, though, Alexander Lukashenko didn't look at all worried. Now, Lukashenko still claims that he won the election, getting about 80 percent of the vote. But of course, they rigged the votes and people were furious about it. And so that's when literally hundreds of thousands of Belarusians took to the streets last summer, last August, to try to push him out of power. We can't come on! We can't come on! And that has been the dynamic in Belarus for the last year or more, is that he's been fighting this pitch battle with the opposition activists, normal Belarusians, people who want something better for their country after 26 years.

Follow the law and any talk of repression will disappear. The law is above all else. If you break it, we will respond. And we've been light-handed in our response so far. To be honest with you, I've always held back our law enforcement. I told them there's no need for a heavy response. Can you tell me more about how he has responded to these protests and to these protesters? Oh, it's brutal.

It's been absolutely awful. It's brutal. It's been absolutely awful. There have been something like 35,000 detentions. Over 1,000 people have been given jail sentences, many of them sent to hard labor. Just this week, a man named Pavel Severnets was detained, and he was sentenced to seven years in a labor camp just this week. Another political prisoner died in prison this week. He was sentenced to jail for five years in a penal colony for organizing protests. He's dead. And this is just like in one week, he moved to shut down all of the independent media in Belarus.

People still tried. They worked overseas. They did what they could. Well, then he started going after the employees who used to work for some of these media outlets. And that's what he did this week. They launched a tax evasion criminal case against former journalists who worked for a very popular independent media site called Tootbee. So they detained this week 12 employees. So this is just, I mean, it is, it's so much, it's almost hard to kind of digest the amount of repression that's been going on.

Wow. Wow. And what was Protasevich's role in all these protests that led to these extreme charges and this arrest this week? Well, he's only 26 years old, but he sure done a lot in that time. He was the editor-in-chief of this site on Telegram called Necta. Telegram's not that popular in North America, but it's kind of like WhatsApp and it's used all the time over here. And it was basically during these protests last year, giving out directions, telling people how, where to go to protest, where the police were coming to get them. It became the go-to site. If you were opposed to Lukashenko and you wanted to show it, you tuned into NECTA, and that's where you got your information. And so he had actually been doing this, not even in Belarus. He had been in Poland at that point and then moved to

Lithuania because he had felt so threatened by this. Lukashenko, obviously, there was a lead-up to this as well. And so this didn't all just crystallize during the elections. Nonetheless, Protasevich was a very key player. It's still nonetheless a bit surprising that the president of this country would go after a 26-year-old journalist because he'd become such a threat. But it would go so far as to hijack an airplane to get him. But that just shows you how powerful the social media movement was and how important it was in organizing opposition. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem.

Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo, 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast,

just search for Money for Couples. The fact that he has taken this incredibly extreme step of basically hijacking a plane to arrest a dissident. What does that tell you about Lukashenko's grip on power? Well, you can read a couple of things into it. I think the message that he's clearly trying to send with this is, don't screw with me. You know, if you're an opponent of my regime, of me, you're not safe anywhere. Don't think that just because you left Belarus, I can't get you because when you're not looking, I will. Because that is exactly what happened in this case. So there is a real fear and intimidation message that he's trying to get out here. Flipped around the other way, you could also say this is a very embattled leader who's isolated in the world, who is willing to do anything to stay in

power, because that is essentially what it is. His only real friend left in the world is President Vladimir Putin of Russia. So Russia is Lukashenko's backer. Were it not for Russia's help, almost certainly he would have been gone by now. So he's isolated from the rest of Europe. He's got one major backer. In fact, Belarus is almost like a client state now of Russia. So this is someone who is trying very, very hard to do anything possible, repression, you name it, in order to keep his job and probably to save his life too. it in order to keep his job and probably to save his life too. You know, Chris, Anne Applebaum in the Atlantic compared what happened with the arrest to Russia using poison against enemies in the UK and Saudi Arabia murdering Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey, that this kind of transnational

repression sends a message to dissidents and exiles everywhere that they are not safe no matter where they go. And for this reason, Lukashenko cannot get away with this. And what can the international community do to respond to this? It strikes me that not a lot happened in those previous cases. Well, it is both difficult but also crucially important to make a solid response. And you've seen that over the last 72 hours of this since this incident happened. The European Union was directly affected by this. These were, as I mentioned earlier, EU passengers on a flight that was flown by an EU-registered airline, Ryanair, an Irish airline, going between two EU capitals. So this was a fundamental, according to a lot of European Union members

of parliament and presidents and prime ministers, this is a direct attack on the EU. And the difference, I think, with, let's say, the Khashoggi case, or perhaps with the Skripals one, certainly with the Alexei Navalny case in Russia, is that there was some wiggle room for these countries to say, well, it's kind of not really about us, sort of an internal matter, but there's no chance of that here. And that in part is, I think, why you saw some very quick action by the EU when it came to flights into Belarus, out of Belarus, and also over Belarus as well. So all day long, various airlines from KLM to Air France, even many outside Europe, Singapore Airlines, for example, they've all been banning their flights from anywhere around Belarus. And Belarus's national airline, Belavia, has also been basically kicked out of airports all over Europe.

So that's going to have a couple of impacts. One, it's going to make it very difficult for all Belarusians to kind of fly around. It's going to cost the Belarusian government some money, somewhere around maybe $80 million a year Canadian in terms of overflight fees that the country can charge international airlines. It also sends a strong message that this is unacceptable. The problem is, once you get beyond that, how much more can you really do? And this is what they're struggling with now. I think what you're going to see is that the various elements of

Belarusian opposition are going to be meeting with European governments, meeting with Canada's government, the United States, and saying this is what we think you should do to really show your outrage at this, to really denounce Lukashenko's actions. And they're going to suggest things like, for example, putting sanctions on state industries from Belarus. They're going to suggest sanctioning more sanctions on Belarusian banks, for example, and also senior Belarusian individuals. Now, some of this is already being done. So in a way, it's incremental. But if you do it all at once,

and you do it quite extensively, and all the countries get involved, then you might start to inflict some economic pain on Belarus. The EU accounts for about 20% of Belarus's economy, the trade. Russia accounts for 50% of it. So you're not really, you know, you have to keep that in perspective. The country that could really do the most is Russia, and it's not going to. And in the meantime, a video of Protasevich making a quote-unquote confession. I don't have any health problems, either with my heart or any other organs. I continue to cooperate with investigators, and I have confessed to having organized mass unrest in the city of Minsk.

His father told the BBC that he fears he might be tortured. I think he was forced to do it. These are not his words. It's not his intonation of speech. He's acting very reserved, and you can see he's nervous. It's very likely that his nose is broken because the shape of it is different. What kind of punishment might he be facing in Belarus now that he's essentially been kidnapped?

Well, he's in a very, very bad spot because people today have been analyzing, you know, how he looks, were there bruises on his forehead? I know his dad, as you mentioned in that interview, said, well, there was a pack of cigarettes on the table and he never smoked. So maybe that was a message. They're all going over all of these clues from this very disturbing video because it does appear to me that it was made under duress. But don't forget his girlfriend is also there. They have her as well, so they can torture her too, depending on what he says. So it's difficult. He's in a very, very bad spot. Belarus has not abolished the death penalty. It is,

I think, I can't think of another European nation that has it. So that is hanging over his head. And at the very least, something like a 15-year prison sentence can be hanging over his head. His family, you know, is also on his mind, no doubt. His parents, he had to bring them out of Belarus with him when he first fled to Poland and then moved to Lithuania. So he's going to be worried about them. Are they going to be the subject of some kind of secret service action too if he doesn't confess?

So his options are really tragically quite limited, I think. Wow. All right, Chris Brown, thank you, as always. Thank you, Jamie. On Tuesday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau sharply denounced Roman Protasevich's arrest. This was a clear attack on democracy and on the freedom of the press. We condemn it and call for his immediate release. We also condemn this kind of dangerous interference in civil aviation. Canada has existing sanctions in place against Belarus

and will be examining further options. Shortly after Trudeau's comments, Belarus announced it will close its embassy in Canada. That's all for today. Thanks so much for listening to FrontBurner. Talk to you tomorrow. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.