Belarusians more and more cornered after EU cuts air hyperlinks – KIRO 7 Information Seattle

Kiev, Ukraine – (AP) – With fear of repression mounting among Belarusians following the arrest of a dissident journalist whose plane was forcibly diverted to Minsk, those seeking to leave the country are increasingly cornered.

Land borders were already tightly restricted and the European Union has now banned flights from Belarus after a jetliner diverted to Minsk earlier this week and authorities arrested a dissident journalist who was on board.

This leaves opposition-minded Belarusians hardly any chance of escaping the authoritarian rule of President Alexander Lukashenko.

“Closing the borders turns Belarus into a can of rotting canned food. We are being held hostage, ”said Tatsiana Hatsura-Yavorska, who heads a rights group that helps those released to get used to life and also organizes documentary film festivals.

“The authorities have stepped up repression in recent months to create an atmosphere of fear,” she told the Associated Press.

Hatsura-Yavorska said most of her friends and co-workers had been detained, searched and brutally beaten, and many had fled Belarus.

She sat in jail 10 days after organizing a photo exhibition of medical workers in the coronavirus pandemic that authorities ruled in favor of the opposition. She faces charges that could jail her for three years.

Lukashenko, who led the former Soviet nation of 9.3 million people for more than a quarter of a century, faced unprecedented protests after his re-election for a sixth term in a vote in August 2020 that the opposition rejected as manipulated. He responded to the demonstrations with crackdowns in which more than 35,000 people were arrested and thousands of them beaten.

Hatsura-Yavorska said after she was arrested last month, she was put in an ice-cold cell for two days without a mattress and forced to wake up every two hours at night.

The authorities released her after 10 days on condition that she did not leave the city until a criminal investigation into “organizing activities contrary to public order” was initiated.

“Who would want to stay in such a country?” She said by phone. “The authorities have divided all citizens into loyalists and enemies and treat us accordingly.”

Hatsura-Yavorska’s Ukrainian husband was ordered to leave Belarus with her 9-year-old son and was barred from returning for 10 years.

“You used my son to blackmail me. They beat me during the interrogation and threatened to put me in prison and in the end they pushed me out of the country, ”Volodymyr Yavorskyy told the AP in Kiev. “I couldn’t imagine that I would end up in hell in the middle of Europe. Belarus is being closed from our eyes and millions of Belarusians are being held hostage. “

He communicates with his wife over the Internet, but fears that the Belarusian authorities will tighten controls.

“The public protest has continued, and so the authorities are closing … everything they can reach – borders, organizations and websites,” he said. “You are turning Belarus into a burned country.”

Belarus tightened restrictions on its land border in December. Those wishing to transfer must state their reason, such as work, medical care or training, and can only do this once every six months.

On Sunday, a Ryanair plane, which was flying from Greece to Lithuania with dissident journalist Raman Pratasevich on board, was diverted to Minsk after Belarusian air traffic controllers ordered the jet’s crew to land there because of a bomb threat. The authorities then arrested Pratasevich, who ran a messaging app channel used to organize demonstrations against Lukashenko.

EU leaders condemned this as air piracy and responded by banning Belarusian airlines from the bloc’s airspace and airports.

“The air boycott has not only harmed the regime, but has ricocheted off opponents who are willing to leave,” said Artyom Shraybman, a Minsk-based independent political analyst.

While Belarusian airlines have been banned from EU airspace, they are allowed to fly to other destinations.

When a man arrived in Tbilisi, Georgia on a flight from Belarus, he said, “People are trying to go, and those who can go to Europe are trying.”

The traveler, who wanted to be identified by only his first name, Anatoly, for fear of reprisals, said the rerouting of the Ryanair flight had deepened his concerns about his country’s course, noting that “people cannot, cannot guarantee, their future “. the future of their children. “

Alena, another Belarusian traveler who also asked to withhold her last name, said people who can afford to leave Belarus would try what she described as the government’s “brutal” response to protests.

Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the opposition’s biggest challenger in the August vote, called on the EU to tighten sanctions and ban Belarus from Interpol and the International Civil Aviation Organization in order to increase pressure on Lukashenko’s regime.

But she also called for the country’s land borders to be opened.

“I understand the EU’s decision to suspend flights over Belarus as it is a security issue for all Europeans,” said Tsikhanouskaya, who fled to neighboring Lithuania shortly after the election under pressure from the government. “But we demand that the land borders be opened to the free travel of Belarusian citizens because we cannot allow the regime to turn our country into a prison for 9 million people.”

___

Follow all AP stories about Belarus at https://apnews.com/hub/Belarus.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed in any way without permission.