Belarusians who fled crackdown fearful after diverted flight – KIRO 7 Information Seattle

VILNIUS, Lithuania – (AP) – Viachka Krasulin said he was arrested and brutally beaten all over the body by police in Belarus for attending a rally in August 2020 that questioned the results of an election at the the authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko remained in power.

Krasulin said security forces threatened to sodomize him with a baton for joining the protest. After he complained to the authorities about the police actions, they opened criminal proceedings against him – and not against the security forces – and he decided to flee to neighboring Lithuania.

Up until this week, he and other opponents of Lukashenko had believed they were safe from the government’s sweeping action by moving to nearby European Union countries.

Now you are not so sure. On Sunday Belarus rerouted a jetliner carrying dissident journalist Raman Pratasevich to Minsk, where he was arrested. And Lukashenko swore to hunt down those who oppose him, even if they move abroad.

“I was a hostage of Lukashenko’s regime, but now the entire European Union is in the same situation,” said Krasulin, a 32-year-old ethnographer and musician. “Torture, brutal repression and the hunt for journalists have spread beyond Belarusian borders and become a problem for all of Europe.”

The Ryanair jet was traveling from Greece to Lithuania – both members of the European Union – when Belarusian air traffic controllers ordered it to land in Minsk over a bomb threat and Lukashenko messed up a fighter plane to escort it. As soon as the plane hit the tarmac, security forces seized Pratasevich and his Russian girlfriend and took them into custody.

Pratasevich, 26, ran a popular messaging app channel that helped organize protests against Lukashenko. He fled abroad in 2019. He was on a Belarusian list of suspected “terrorists” and was charged in absentia with mass unrest.

The rallies against Lukashenko, who had been in power for more than a quarter of a century, lasted months after his re-election on August 9 for a sixth term in the vote that the opposition rejected as rigged. The 66-year-old leader arrested more than 35,000 people, thousands of whom were reported as beaten.

Krasulin, who now lives in Vilnius, shuddered when he remembered his own arrest on August 11th.

He tried to help a protester who was hit by a police rubber bullet when he was dragged into a police car, where he and others were beaten with clubs. Officers picked him for his looks, he said.

“They obviously didn’t like my long hair – they beat me and threatened to rape me with a baton, but first they decided to cut my hair,” he said. “They pulled my hair up and cut me with a pocket knife.”

The beating continued at the prison, where Krasulin and hundreds of others were held in a six-bed cell for 40 people for 24 hours without food or water. He was denied access to a lawyer and was sentenced to 11 days.

After his release, he allowed the doctors to document the traces of the beatings on his body. Nine months later, he is still suffering from neck pain from nerve damage.

Krasulin called on the Belarusian authorities to investigate the beatings and threats from security forces. Instead, they opened a case against him for participating in protests, and he fled to Lithuania to avoid imminent arrest.

Thousands did the same.

The Lithuanian Migration Department said that more than 16,000 Belarusians received long-term visas in the past nine months, including nearly 3,500 for humanitarian reasons that imply political motivation.

Vilnius has become the main opposition center and is home to activists, human rights defenders, journalists and even an entire Belarusian university in exile.

Many of them feared the rerouting of the Ryanair flight just before it was due to cross the Lithuanian border, and Lukashenko fueled that fear on Wednesday by warning his overseas enemies that the authorities would be pursuing them.

“We know your faces and it is only a matter of time before you are brought to justice before the Belarusian people,” he said in a speech.

Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, Lukashenko’s main opponent in the election, who moved to Lithuania under official pressure days after the vote, said she had taken the same flight as Pratasevich from Athens to Vilnius, but a week before him.

“In the middle of Europe a regime has emerged that openly spits on all norms and rules and turns Belarus into a black spot,” she said.

One day after his arrest, Pratasevich was shown on Belarusian state television how he confessed to organizing riots. His mother said his nose was broken and his face was heavily made up to cover up bruises, and his father said the confession was likely coerced.

“Pratasevich’s demonstrative arrest should remind journalists and bloggers who have fled the country that the KGB has long hands and that it is too early to relax,” said lawyer Siarhej Zikratsky, referring to the Belarusian State Security Agency who always acronym from the Soviet era still comes under his control.

Zikratski, who defended Belarusian journalists under attack by the authorities, fled to Vilnius with his wife and two daughters this month after his legal license was revoked.

“What is going on in Belarus can be called legal default – laws no longer work there,” he said. “Today a lawyer risks being in the same cell with his client just to fulfill his professional duties.”

Pratasevich’s 23-year-old Russian friend Sofia Sapega, who was taken off the jet and arrested with him, studied at the European University of the Humanities, which moved from Minsk to Vilnius in 2005 after a conflict with the authorities.

“Lithuania has become a safe haven for thousands of Belarusians,” said Maksimas Milta, a university representative. “Lithuania had never seen such a massive exodus from Belarus before.”

Sapega was also shown on Belarusian television when he confessed to investigators while in custody.

Milta said Belarusian television showed a fake front page of Sapega’s thesis about using messaging apps to compile personal information on police officers. Her real issue, he said, was the laws of marriage.

“Such KGB methods give an idea of ​​what the Belarusians have to do on a daily basis,” added Milta.

He noted that the EU’s decision to exclude Belarusian airlines from the bloc’s airspace and airports would make it difficult for Belarusians to leave the country.

After the Belarusian authorities restricted land transport due to protests last autumn, air connections were the last chance for Belarusians to leave the country and the EU move will further limit their options.

“Millions of Belarusians cannot leave and have practically become Lukashenko’s hostages,” said Krasulin, who earns his living by repairing church organs and occasionally working in construction.

He hopes to be able to return to Belarus one day.

“This absurdity in the middle of Europe cannot last forever,” said Krasulin.

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