The parents of journalist Roman Protasevich ask for international support: "Help me free my son"

Between sobs, Belarusian Natalia Protasevich asks for international help to secure the release of her son, Roman Protasevich, the journalist critical of Aleksandr Lukashenko's regime detained in Minsk on Sunday. "I hope you are listening to the cry of my heart, the cry of my soul," claimed the woman at a press conference in Warsaw, where she lives in exile with her husband, Dmitri. The parents of the 26-year-old, whose unprecedented arrest has sparked a geopolitical conflict, fear for his life. “I beg you: help me free my son. We do not know where they have him, it is a desperate situation ”, lamented the young man's mother.

Neither Natalia Protasevich nor her husband Dmtri, who considers it "unheard of" that the Belarusian authorities forced the plane in which their son was traveling to arrest him, have been able to communicate with the young man. His girlfriend, Sovia Sapega, a 23-year-old student, is also in detention. “They don't say anything. This is how they hide all the atrocities they are doing to the people ”, complained Dmitri, a former lieutenant colonel in the Belarusian Army. Police brutality and constant reports of torture by the Belarusian security forces against those detained in the protests against Lukashenko spurred the mobilizations and triggered the alarm of international human rights organizations. Now, Protasevich's family fear that he will be tortured in prison.

Meanwhile, evidence is mounting that the alleged threat that the Belarusian authorities used to divert the plane to their territory was a ruse. The email from a Protonmail account, signed by "Hamas soldiers," and containing the warning against the Ryanair flight on which Protasevich was traveling was received after air traffic controllers asked the aircraft - which was flying from Athens to Vilnius - as confirmed by the Swiss encrypted messaging service provider. Information that further undermines Lukashenko's credibility. "We can confirm that the message in question was sent after the aircraft was redirected," Protonmail said in a statement. “We have not seen credible evidence that the Belarusian claims are true,and we will support the European authorities in their investigations once we receive a legal request ”, adds the note.

Stepan Putsila, co-founder of the Telegram Nexta channel that Protasevich managed until a few months ago and which was key to the opposition during the protests last summer, has defined the journalist's arrest as "international terrorism." Nexta, which is based in a small office in Warsaw, was declared an "extremist" late last year. Like Protasevich, Stepan Putsila, 22, is on the wanted list of the Belarusian secret services (KGB). Both young men had talked on occasion that it was best to avoid going through Belarus at all costs; even your skies. Out of "tiredness" or because he did not think that Lukashenko would go "that far" to arrest him, Putsila said in the conference broadcast on the internet, Protasevich did not follow "his instinct."

In an atmosphere of repression against the independent press and the new media, the young Nexta team, most of them exiles, are used to receiving threats.

But since the dissident's arrest, "intimidation maneuvers" have multiplied, says Putsila, who comments that the Polish authorities have provided them with "protection."

"Everything is a risk, we know it, but we are not going to stop working," says the young man.

Nexta premieres a documentary on corruption in Belarus and believes that the Lukashenko regime will do everything in its power to "silence" and "discredit" them.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) Executive Secretary Christophe Deloire (center) and other activists hold photographs of the journalist detained in Belarus Roman Protasevich and other arrested informants.

PETRAS MALUKAS / AFP

On Wednesday, various media close to the Belarusian government and the Kremlin released photographs of Roman Protasevich in Ukraine in uniform and together with fighters from the far-right organization Azov in 2015, at a hot moment in the Donbas war between the Ukrainian Army and the supported separatists. by the Kremlin. His parents claim that the accusations that the young man fought in the conflict are "falsehoods", part of the "effort to discredit him." They point out that the young man took the first opportunity he had to go to the front lines to cover the war as a journalist. “Since I was 15 years old, I wanted to be a correspondent and be in the hottest places in the world. His only weapon was the word ”, emphasized his father.

The condemnation of Belarus for forcing a passenger plane to land at Minsk airport to stop the dissident blogger is escalating. This Thursday, the Group of Seven (G7), the most industrialized countries, charged the Lukashenko government for the maneuver and threatened additional sanctions. “This action endangered the safety of the passengers and the flight crew. It was also a serious attack on civil aviation rules, ”they say in a statement on behalf of the foreign ministers of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States.