Who is Roman Protasevich, a 26-year-old journalist sentenced to death in Belarus?
2021-05-23 23:09:51
TiranaPost
The arrest of 26-year-old journalist and activist Roman Protasevich has turned into a real thriller that has sparked the reaction of international public opinion. Protasevich is effectively the most endangered activist in Europe, having been sentenced to death in 2017 by the Lukashenko regime and risks execution.
But who is Protasevich?
Roman Protasevich is the founder of the anti-government news portal NEXTA which operated mainly on the social network Telegram, which can not be censored by governments and users find it easier to maintain anonymity. He has been one of the most vocal public voices against President Alexander Lukashenko, who has been at the helm of the former Soviet republic of Belarus since 1991.
He was one of the mobilizers of the anti-government protests of 2020 where 34 thousand people were arrested and thousands more were raped on the streets of Minsk. Accused of being an "extremist who incites anti-national revolt", he was wanted by the Belarusian authorities who unjustly convicted him.
Belarus is believed to have used Russian secret services to capture him, after a few minutes before taking the Ryanair plane from Athens, he wrote to a friend that he was being photographed by "suspicious people" thought to have been Russian intelligence operatives who saw the plane took over, signaling authorities in Belarus that they had forced the plane to land in Minsk before being allowed to arrive in its destination in Vilnius, Lithuania, on the pretext of a terrorist threat.
He was in Athens to cover Zvjetlana Tihanofkaja, the opposition candidate for the Russian presidency who was attending the "Delphi Forum" in the Hellenic capital.
International pressure has been mounted mostly on his immediate release and permission to return to Lithuania where he had been in exile for several months.
Tiranapost.al
