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We expect "better" from democracies largely because they have more sophisticated and effective ways to defang troubling journalists.

You don't really need to murder or imprison them when you can just make it so no one trusts them or they can't find an audience.

That said I do think Belarus fucked up here evaluating by their own best interests. Having an open dictatorship in Europe has always made a lot of people uncomfortable but was tolerated as long as they didn't draw too much attention to it or do any scary shit to outsiders.

Here they kinda did both. Would not surprise me if this ends up being a huge problem for them long-term.