Who is journalist Pratasevich and why did Belarus arrest him?

He told Russian Radio Service Free Europe that “if people are sent to prison for expressions of different opinion, then what about the largest Belarusian media?”.

Belarusian authorities have activated a military plane to escort the civilian plane, which has been on the road to Vilnius from Athens on May 23rd, for what eventually turned out to have been a false bomb alarm.

When the plane is down, police have detained Raman Pratasevich, 26, opposition activist and journalist, who faces charges in Belarus, for which he may remain 15 years in prison.

After the plane landed in Minsk, an unidentified traveler told the Latvian news page Delphi that Protasevich was immediately arrested and his luggage searched.

“We asked what was happening”, the passenger said, to add that Protasevic “was shaking” saying that “they will execute me here”.

Later, via a video Protasevich said it is co-operating with authorities.

I can say I don't have health problems. I continue to work with investigators and I am being questioned about the organisation of mass protests in the town of Minsk”, he said in the video broadcast by state Belarus television.

On the video he seemed to have some black marks on his forehead.

How did this young journalist become a digital revolutionary and provoke the wrath of Belarusian authorities?

Note that he has also been co-winner of the 2020 European Parliament's Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought.

Journalist Pratasevich has been a cofounder and editor-in-chief of Nezta-Live, a news channel concentrated in Belarus. The media he led had gained credibility as an alternative and reliable source of information. The reports that this medium had made had angered Belarusn authorities.

By the time the August 9th elections in Belarus were rejected as manipulated and protests broke out against Alyaxasand Lucas, his medium had made good coverage of the events, based on exclusive materials provided by government circles, as well as showing video the violence of the Belarus regime.

When Lucashenka was declared the winner of a sixth term, the protesters were ready, and this was partly due to Nexta reporting, which posted information via the telegram text platform, thus avoiding restrictions the government put on the internet.

Protests became daily in Belarus.

Next was publishing information about time and places where demonstrators would meet, then suggestions on how to avoid safety organs and instructions to keep the movement peaceful.

The images of tens of thousands of arrests and brutal violence were made public for the outside world, in part by Nezta. Journalists who did not work for state media are also targeted by police bodies.

In 2019, Pratesevich had left Belarus because of pressure from the authorities and he dropped the job at Next-Live in September 2020 to work for another known channel in the telegram.

In the course of the protests, Nezta-Live and its logo were declared extremist on the part of a Belarusic court and was ordered to restrict its distribution to the internet.

After this decision, the news site changed its logo and continued its work through the possibility that the telegram app offered it. Journalist Pratasevich was charged with organising protests, undermining public order, inciting hatred, and placed on a terrorist watch list.

Protasevich himself posted a copy of an official Belarusan list of terrorists on which his name appeared. He dismissed all charges as politically motivated.

This warrant sounds like a special price from state authorities”, Pratasevich, Time Current, the network led by Radio Free Europe in co-operation with the Voice of America, told Pratasevich.

It seems that power already considers any expression of opinion different, a crime. We can see this in the database, from the statistics of people currently held in prison, etc.”, he said.

The International Organisation Amnesty International, raising the issue of arresting at least 33,000 people, has accused the Belarusian authorities of lifting hundreds of politically motivated criminal cases against members of the political opposition, protesters and their supporters of”.

The organisation has said that in many cases Belarusian authorities “arrested, beat, fined or deported journalists covering protests”.

Pratasevich was working for “Belarus of the Brain”, another news channel in the telegram, also banned by the government.

Pratasevich has been a former beneficiary of the Vaclav Havel Journalial Exchange, offered by Radio Free Europe along with the Czech Foreign Ministry.

When he was declared the winner of the stock exchange in 2017-18, he was still a student of journalism at Belarus State University.

According to an organisation supporting Belarusian journalists, Media Solidarity Pratasevich had recently moved from Poland to Vilnius, where the leader of the Belarusian opposition, Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya is located.

He had travelled to Greece recently to cover a visit by Tsikhanouskaya. The journalist's father, Dzmitry Pratasevich, told the Belarus Service Radio Free Europe he was informed of his son's arrest in Telegram.

The parents of the journalist, who moved abroad eight months ago to escape pressure in Belarus, were aware that their son was in Greece but did not know the details of his return to Vilnius.

He didn't fully inform us of all his moves, he probably didn't want many to know where he was”, said Dzmitry Pratasevich, a former military man.

Raman Pratasevich had been open about the fact that his parents did not always share his views, and his father agreed to Radio Free Europe that “feared political persecution for their son's activities”.

However, Dzmitry Pratasevich said that for his son's work, “ultimately life showed that he was right”.

“As it seems, all the people who are fighting for freedom and independence in our country are right,” he said.

According to him, the Lucas regime is targeting his son because the current <x0 government is afraid of independent journalists, freedom of speech, fears that its actions will become known to the international community”.

He adds that through “the crash” of his son, the Belarusian authorities “are forgetting that they are witnessing to the world what method they use”.

The state's actions to eliminate the dissident, he called <x0 human “”. /Rel