Activism in his blood

MOSCOW • Belarusian journalist Roman Protasevich, 26, began his digital activism in his teens.

A student at the time, he was arrested in 2012 for running two groups on the Russian-based social networking site Vkontakte against Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.

One of them was called "We are sick of this Lukashenko" - the former collective farm manager who has ruled Belarus with an iron fist since 1994, a year before the activist was born.

"They hit me in the kidneys and liver," he said at the time. "I urinated blood for three days afterwards. They threatened to accuse me of unsolved murders."

He later worked as a photographer for Belarusian media and was the recipient of a Vaclav Havel Journalism Fellowship in 2017-2018 - an award for aspiring independent journalists named after the late Czech dissident-turned-president.

Mr Protasevich left Belarus in 2019, after he started working for the highly influential pro-opposition Telegram channel Nexta ("Somebody" in Belarusian).

He continued to roil Mr Lukashenko's regime while living in exile in Lithuania, so much so that he was charged in November with inciting public disorder and social hatred.

Mr Protasevich later became editor-in-chief at Nexta, which currently has more than 1.2 million subscribers. The channel had a role in organising the anti-Lukashenko protests by sharing with its followers details on meeting times and dates.

Living between Poland and Lithuania - both hubs for Belarusian exiles - Mr Protasevich has since become the editor of the channel BGM - an acronym in Russian meaning "Smart Belarus" - which has 260,000 subscribers.

After the plane was diverted and coming in to land in Minsk on Sunday, passengers overheard him saying that "he was facing the death penalty".

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, NYTIMES