The first sentence is written in capital letters, as if to better underline its absurdity. “I am officially recognized as a terrorist. Yes, this is not a joke. The Belarusian KGB put me on the terrorist list. Now my name is on the same list as the Daesh guys. “ When Roman Protassevich posted this message on his Twitter account on November 19, 2020, he had already been living in exile for a year between Poland and Lithuania.
At 26, the Belarusian opponent, former editor-in-chief of the influential opposition platform Nexta, knows he is being hunted by the regime of President Alexander Lukashenko, whose fraudulent re-election on August 9, 2020, sparked an uprising unprecedented popular.
In the fall of 2020, the Nexta channel, run from Warsaw and available on the encrypted messaging application Telegram, is then the essential tool for protesters, who use it en masse to organize demonstrations against the government and disseminate the images. police violence. At the height of the movement, more than 2 million people meet there every day, out of the country’s 9.5 million inhabitants. The Nexta team receives 10,000 messages per hour, many of which come from sources within the regime.
“It was our time”
“We realized it was our time, Roman Protassevich explained to the British daily The Independent in August 2020. Those who had the potential to lead the protest were either in jail or under surveillance. It was time to intervene. ” He was convinced that Alexander Lukashenko would fall “In a few weeks”. More than nine months later, the president, at the head of the former Soviet republic since 1994, is still there, and the opponent has become the bête noire of the regime.
When the plane connecting Athens to Vilnius branches off towards Minsk, this Sunday, May 23, Roman Protassevich, present on board, immediately understands. “He started to panic and say it was because of him”, testified Monika Simkiene, a Lithuanian passenger. He just turned to the people and said he risked the death penalty ”. Once certain of being arrested, however, it seemed ” very calm “.
Born on May 5, 1995, a year after Alexander Loukachenko came to power, Roman Protassevich has been an opposition activist since his teenage years. Its first demonstrations date back to 2010. At the time, already, thousands of Belarusians had taken to the streets to protest against the re-election of the autocrat, before being violently repressed.
You have 38.08% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.