DISINFO: The Ryanair case shows the West's hyprocrisy
SUMMARY
The West is hypocritical when they accuse Belarus about the landing in Minsk of Ryanair FR4978 flight from Athens to Vilnius. There is a similar case of the forced landing of Bolivia's President Evo Morales in Vienna in 2013 when the United States asked for it due to suspicions that Edward Snowden was on board. Additionally, Roman Protasevich is not an activist and journalist but a neonazi with connections with Ukrainian elements.
RESPONSE
This is a recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative to deflect attention from the act of forcing a civilian plane to land under false bomb pretext. Secondly, it is disinformation about the reasons for the arrest of a Belarusian opposition journalist Raman Pratasevich.
The cited example of the aircraft landing with Evo Morales did not involve bomb scares or crackdowns on the political opposition. In July 2013, under the Obama administration, Bolivian President Evo Morales was forced to land in Austria, amid US pressure, in a hunt for US fugitive Edward Snowden, who was thought to be aboard. But unlike the Belarusian plot, European nations refused it permission to enter their airspace, Bolivian officials later told reporters, leaving them with no clear route back home after a trip to Moscow.
According to The Washington Post, some analysts see the arrest of the journalist Pratasevich as part of a more recent trend — what Freedom House, a nongovernmental, nonpartisan advocacy organisation, has dubbed “transnational repression.”
Also, Roman Pratasevich is not a neonazi. He is one of the founders of the Telegram channel NEXTA that had been a key source in disseminating images of state violence during Belarusian protests last year.
The EU condemned Belarusian action against civil plane and the detention of Pratasevich. In a declaration on behalf of the EU on the forced diversion of Ryanair flight FR4978 to Minsk on 23 May 2021, the High Representative called for the immediate release of Mr Pratasevich. This was followed by a European Council statement, in which the EU leaders called for targeted individual and economic sanctions as well as to ban overflight of EU airspace by Belarusian airlines and prevent access to EU airports of flights operated by these.
The Amnesty International called the forced diversion and landing of the Ryanair flight a chilling act of air piracy:
This apparent act of air piracy is chilling. There is little doubt that the Belarusian authorities used a false bomb threat and a MiG fighter jet to force an airplane flying from one country of the European Union to another to land with the apparent sole purpose of detaining an exiled critical journalist whom they badly wanted silenced.