Thursday, May 27, 2021
No information on whereabouts
Protassevich’s mother pleads for her son
The journalist Protassevich, who was arrested on behalf of the Belarusian head of state Lukashenko, is not allowed to receive a visit from a lawyer. This is reported by his shocked parents, who do not even know where the authoritarian state is keeping their son. They fear further abuse.
After the forced landing of a passenger plane in Belarus and the arrest of the journalist Roman Protassevich, his parents are still uncertain about where he is, even after days. “We don’t know where our son is, nor do we know his state of health,” said his father Dmitri Protassevich in Warsaw. A lawyer hired by the family was not admitted to the detained 26-year-old. He also received no information about the detention center in which he was incarcerated.
The authorities of the authoritarian Republic of Belarus landed a passenger plane of the Irish airline Ryanair on Sunday on its way from Greece to Lithuania with a MiG-29 fighter jet – allegedly because of a bomb threat. That later turned out to be a false alarm. More than 100 people were on board, including the government critic Protassevich and his girlfriend Sofia Sapega. Both were arrested.
On Monday, Protassevich was seen in a video from pretrial detention spread by state propaganda. In it he affirmed that he would be dealt with correctly. In the film, the blogger also confessed to having organized mass riots. The recordings showed clear traces of abuse on their son’s face, emphasized the parents who live in exile in Poland. The confession was forced.
They also contradicted the allegations of the Belarusian ruler Alexander Lukashenko that Roman Protassevich had fought as a mercenary in eastern Ukraine on the side of the government troops. “He was a reporter in Donbass,” said mother Natalia Protassevich. “His weapon was just the word,” said the father, a former officer in the Belarusian army. There is a lot of speculation floating around that should discredit his son. The mother made an emotional appeal to the international community to press for Protassevich’s release. “My soul screams: Save Roman, save my son!” She said.
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