Belarusian opposition leader asks UK to put pressure on regime

Belarusian opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya on Tuesday urged UK lawmakers to impose tougher sanctions on President Alexander Lukashenko, saying the forced landing of the Ryanair plane shows his regime is stepping up violence.

Tikhanovskaya, who lives in exile in Lithuania, told the Foreign Affairs Committee that now was the time “when all should unite and put more pressure on this regime. We have to use this moment”.

Minsk detained opposition campaigner Roman Protasevich on May 23 after telling Ryanair pilots to divert his flight destined for Lithuania over a false bomb threat.

Lukashenko’s action came after international focus shifted away from his regime, Tikhanovskaya said.

“That’s why Lukashenko felt this impunity and crossed this red line”, she told MPs.

“We see the regime is escalating the violence”.

She called for new sanctions against “Belarusian state-owned enterprises fuelling the regime”, as well as individual “businessmen and oligarchs”. She also suggested targeting Belarusian sovereign debt, which is listed on the London Stock Exchange.

Tikhanovskaya asked the UK to help bring about democratic elections in the ex-Soviet state where Lukashenko claimed victory in 2020 elections, whose result was not recognised by most countries.

“Our objective is to conduct free and fair elections this year,” she said.

She suggested the UK could “initiate a preliminary discussion” on an “international high-level political conference on resolving the crisis” and invite representatives of Russia and the Belarus regime.

Belarus has paraded Protasevich in front of television cameras, issuing “confessions” which his family and supporters say were made under duress.

“We’re sure Roman was tortured and humiliated physically and morally,” Tikhanovskaya said, adding that she was “shocked” that Lukashenko sparked an “international conflict” to take “revenge” on a single activist.

“I think it was really a big mistake of Lukashenko,” she said.

“Instead of thinking strategically, he is starting to think emotionally”.

The 26-year-old activist was one of the founders of Nexta, an opposition Telegram channel which galvanised demonstrations against Lukashenko.

– ‘Exceptional event’ –

The UK government has responded by banning Belarusian flag ship carrier Belavia and telling UK airlines not to fly over Belarus.

Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said after the incident that London was mulling further sanctions.

The actions of the Belarusian authorities in diverting the Ryanair plane are currently being investigated by the United Nations’ air transport agency, the ICAO, which is due to issue a report in the coming weeks.

“If it is the case that this was a forced diversion under pretext, that really is an exceptional event in the last 70 years,” the chief executive of the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority, Richard Moriarty, told British lawmakers earlier Tuesday at a meeting of the Transport Select Committee.

Ryanair chief Michael O’Leary told the lawmakers that unidentified people came on board with video cameras and put ‘signficant pressure’ on the crew to say they landed voluntarily, which they refused to do.”

But he argued that the international response to halt flights over Belarus was “not in our long-term interests, of the industry, or in our passengers’ best interests”.

“UK citizens will be disrupted as a result of long-haul flights between the UK and Asia, for example, now having to fly around Belarus”.

“It is a very dangerous territory we are in, if we’re going to start politicising overfly and flying rights over any country”, he said.

Belarus’ ambassador to London, Maxim Yermalovich in a statement sent to lawmakers criticised Britain’s decision to suspend Belavia’s operating permit, saying it went “far beyond the spirit of cooperation”.

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