The Media Freedom Coalition on Saturday strongly condemned the arrest of Roman Protasevich, a co-founder of a Telegram channel that directed post-election protests in Belarus, calling the alleged forced grounding of his Ryanair flight in Minsk "a full frontal attack on media freedom."
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 29th May, 2021) The Media Freedom Coalition on Saturday strongly condemned the arrest of Roman Protasevich, a co-founder of a Telegram channel that directed post-election protests in Belarus, calling the alleged forced grounding of his Ryanair flight in Minsk "a full frontal attack on media freedom."
The document was signed by Austria, Bulgaria, Canada, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Latvia, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, North Macedonia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Switzerland, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, and the US.
"The undersigned members of the Media Freedom Coalition condemn in the strongest terms Belarus' forced diversion and landing of a commercial aircraft and subsequent arrest of journalist Roman Protasevich," the statement released by the US State Department reads.
According to the statement, Protasevich's arrest is a part of a larger campaign "to silence independent voices in Belarus."
"Some 400 journalists and workers in the media in Belarus have faced various forms of repression in the course of the August 9 election and its aftermath," the document stated.
The signatories further demanded the "immediate and unconditional" release of Protasevich and other detained journalists, and warned of consequences for those responsible for "attacks" on media workers.
On May 23, a Vilnius-bound Ryanair plane traveling from Athens was grounded in Minsk over a bomb threat, which later turned out to have been false. Protasevich, who runs the Nexta Telegram channel that Minsk designated as extremist, was among those aboard. He was detained during the stopover and now faces up to 15 years in prison.
Belarus maintains that its air traffic controllers put no pressure on the crew to ground the plane, noting that the pilots decided to make an emergency landing.
