Eyewitness accounts reported that the young journalist was “super-scared” and feared the death penalty from the government in Minsk. Belarusian officials also detained his girlfriend, Sofia Sapega, a European Humanities University law student. Some European leaders denounced the “state-sponsored hijacking” and urged commercial planes to detour around Belarusian airspace. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called the forced landing a “shocking act” — and White House press secretary Jen Psaki said it was a “brazen affront to international peace.”
Government repression extends beyond borders
Sunday’s big news story is the latest example of “transnational repression” — when authoritarian governments and their security services actively target political exiles and opponents overseas. The Belarus operation appeared to involve agents who surveilled Protasevich while he was in Greece (although there is no Belarusian Embassy in Greece) and as he boarded the plane.
In a book co-authored with John Heathershaw, we explored how Central Asian dictators and their security forces and agents have regularly engaged in repression far from home — including harassment and intimidation, abductions, renditions and even assassinations — even in Western countries many thought to be a safe harbor for Central Asian political exiles.
Why are dictators escalating their campaigns of transnational repression? Our research suggests that authoritarian leaders have both an increased motivation and a greater capacity to go abroad. First, as authoritarians have successfully consolidated their rule at home by cracking down on political opposition and restricting the media, they have increasingly come to view the activity of the diaspora as the main threats to their regime, often labeling opponents in exile as “terrorists.” Indeed, authorities in Minsk designated Protasevich a “terrorist” in November.
Second, the spread of digital technologies means security services have new tools to actively monitor, intimidate and disrupt overseas political organizing by migrants, dissidents and others in exile. Technology has become the “long arm” of authoritarians, allowing even embattled or war-torn governments in Libya and Syria to reach diaspora activists who reside in what many considered to be secure places such as the United Kingdom and the United States.
International protections are unraveling
At the same time, the international norms that once constrained transnational repression, already severely weakened in recent decades, are quickly unraveling. The global war on terror, in which the United States hosted a network of secret sites and conducted rendition flights in cooperation with partner governments, created a permissive environment for authoritarians like China to use as cover to frame their operations against Uyghurs living outside China, for instance.
And these types of activities have now become routine around the world, often with limited repercussions. A 2021 Freedom House report details how China, Iran, Russia, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, among others, have become emboldened to carry out extraterritorial operations. When the security services of Azerbaijan conducted a similar operation in 2017 in neighboring Georgia to abduct a journalist, though, the international community’s response was muted.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova backed Belarus, not unexpectedly — invoking “whataboutism” in commenting that “It is shocking that the West qualifies as ‘shocking’ the incident in the airspace of Belarus,” citing the downing of Bolivian President Evo Morales’s plane in Austria in 2013 on suspicions that it harbored U.S. fugitive Edward Snowden, as an equivalent action.
Accountability is unlikely
However shocking Belarus’s latest action, holding its leaders accountable will be difficult. Responding effectively to transnational repression is challenging precisely because governments often see such operations as linked to the safety and security of overseas citizens, rather than an infringement of their own citizens’ rights, or a global security issue. And many governments view leveling sanctions against authoritarian states like Belarus and Russia a controversial tool that might invite retaliation.
The U.K and E.U.’s initial response appears to call for the ban of Belarus’s national airline from their airports and to prohibit E.U.-based carriers from flying through Belarusian airspace. Hungary, which has consistently opposed E.U. criticism of anti-democratic practices and human rights violations of authoritarians like China, would likely oppose any tough sanctions.
But private companies also face hurdles to accountability. Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary on Sunday referred to the operation as a “case of state-sponsored hijacking, state-sponsored piracy.” Despite this strong condemnation of the government in Minsk, Ryanair continued to fly through Belarusian airspace after the incident, yet another example of how we compartmentalize the erosion of democratic norms to avoid costly disruptions.
Ultimately, the crisis in Belarus demonstrates how issues involving transnational repression, democratic backsliding and the erosion of international norms are interconnected. Policymakers often argue against criticizing or intervening in the internal affairs of autocracies in the interests of other foreign policy goals. But such arguments crumble when an incident like this directly threatens the safety and security of citizens of other countries.
Picking and choosing which acts of democratic backsliding to respond to, over more than a decade, has emboldened autocrats like Lukashenko and crippled the international community’s ability to collectively respond. Without an unequivocal international response, the hijacking and disruption of civilian airlines could become yet another tool of transnational repression, wielded by autocrats who continue to wage their domestic battles abroad.
Alexander Cooley is director of the Harriman Institute for Russian, Eurasian and East European Studies at Columbia University and the Claire Tow Professor of Political Science at Barnard College in New York. Follow him on Twitter @CooleyOnEurasia.