FLIGHT INTERRUPTIONS NO LONGER UNIQUE

This week, the social news feed of mine was full of people’s complaints over the sudden stop of flights to Belarus. Those international sanctions followed the incident of Founder Of Telegram Channel NEXTA Protasevich Detained In Minsk during the Athens-Vilnius plane emergency landing after an unconfirmed bomb threat. Belarus Is Isolated As Other Countries Move To Ban Flights

That made me think how appropriate it has become to react to this sort of situation, and especially no longer so unique an international experience. Among those caught in it seems to be just ordinary people who will be paying the price of their decision to fly. Will this international reaction from now on be a norm for other cases like that?

And it is not only Belarus people who — in my opinion — still do not deserve these almost personal sanctions restricting their movements. A peaceful, hardworking nation, now they seem in total isolation not only by the authoritarian regime of their president Lukashenko but by these kind of short-sighted decisions of the international community.

Among those affected are all the other people from different countries, including EU members, Ukrainians, anyone who is supposed to fly from, in, over Belarus. As a sudden change of flight routes affects even more people. Russians Reject KLM Air France Planes After They Stopped Flying Over Belarus

It is a very strange precedent to set and I really hope the countries that have implemented it, including mine, will see how ineffective it is for the regime they try to punish and ironically causes so much trouble for those whom they allegedly try to protect.

Ukrainians who were on transplantation programs were much affected as obviously after this sort of operation, they can’t just go by train or bus back to Ukraine so they pleaded for the government to help with coming back. So I do hope this decision of stopping flights to Belarus will be reconsidered. There are other ways to seek justice for dissidents.

As I mentioned before. I do love the Belarussian people and I’m really sorry they are trapped in this situation as Belarus citizens can’t leave Belarus on road. But ironically they can’t leave by plane now either due to democratic Western countries restrictions.

image: strana.ua