Wherever we live, all of us are witnesses as well as participants in the ongoing struggle between democracy and autocracy. If we do nothing, that too is a form of participation, one that favours autocracy.
When, in a matter of minutes, the life of Roman Protasevich, the 26-year-old journalist and a national of Belarus, was transformed, that horrifying transformation gave us all a sobering snapshot of this struggle.
On Sunday May 23, Protasevich, a brave disseminator, from outside, of facts about autocracy in his native land, Belarus, was flying from Athens, Greece, to return to Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, on flight FR4978 of the Irish-owned airline, Ryanair.
Vilnius had been Protasevich’s home in recent years as also the base for his reporting. Flying with him was his girlfriend Sofia Sapega, apparently a Russian citizen but, like Protasevich, living in Vilnius, where she has been a law student.
Parts of Belarus lay below the Boeing 737 as it flew non-stop from Athens to Vilnius. Before he crossed into the skies over Lithuania, the flight’s commander was told, in a message from Minsk, the Belarus capital, that there was a bomb inside his aircraft, and that he must land in Minsk. It seems that a MIG fighter from Belarus’s air force buzzed the Ryanair Boeing to reinforce the demand.
The pilot had little choice. As the plane was landing in Minsk, Protasevich told fellow passengers that he was descending to his death. He and Sofia were both arrested. The aircraft was then permitted to leave for Vilnius. “There was no bomb,” Ryanair later confirmed.
The Belarus authorities presented to the world pictures of a humiliated Protasevich as also a statement by him pleading guilty to the government’s allegations.
Alexander Lukashenko has been Belarus’s president from 1994, without a break. His last “election” in September 2020 was continually protested on the streets of Minsk and other Belarus cities by vast numbers of his compatriots, many thousands of whom were arrested.
Reports tell us that Lukashenko “personally” commanded the operation that forced the Ryanair Boeing to land in Minsk, and that “the people of Belarus” are “admiring” their president’s “boldness” that resulted in Protasevich’s arrest.
Belarus and Russia are close allies, and Lukashenko and Putin are said to be close if mutually wary friends. In the U.S., commentators have pointed out that when many in the world were sympathizing with Belarus’s pro-democracy protesters, then president Donald Trump was conspicuously silent.
Autocracy has its admirers in the world. Quietly or openly, depending on who is around, they will cheer Lukashenko’s triumph over Roman Protasevich.
But democracy too has its soldiers and servants. Their hearts beat for brave young Roman. Lukashenko’s henchmen may have extracted a “confession” from him, but they have no coercive instruments over history. We may be sure that in the end the tricked reporter will have the last laugh over the lying autocrat.
But when? In part at least, the answer may lie in what witnesses do. In some countries, not all of us can report offences we see to law enforcers, who are often hard to find. Not all of us can turn the callousness, cruelty, or unfairness we may see into a permanent record. Or into a photograph, a film, a poem, a book, or even an article.
But we must report it somewhere, to someone. If it’s not possible, or too risky, to reach anyone else, we must at least report any acts we see of coercion by the strong against the weak to ourselves, and to our God.
Whoever we may be, and wherever we are, our willingness to record and report may hasten autocracy’s defeat, and the triumph of gallant victims like Roman Protasevich.