[Svettie]

I think you're choosing an arbitrary standard to defend your narrative. "Protasevich broke laws, but these are not laws that we consider bad."

I could also say that "being a whistleblower about a government agency violating the rights of millions of it's citizens" is something that Western democracies claim to protect, when it's not happening to themselves.

[lazide]

The denying permission vs kidnapping distinction does seem important though, regardless of motives doesn’t it?

[Svettie]

To me it seems minor in the grand scheme of things. It's still trickery. I assume that in the Snowden case the permissions were withdrawn precisely to force a landing in a country where Snowden could be arrested. Belarus doesn't have the same alliances, so they resort to dirtier trickery to accomplish the same goal

[lazide]

It definitely is not. Denying someone access to airspace the way they did for Snowden to a gov’t level official is the equivalent of a bouncer stopping just the head of a competing club from entering - so the cops could grab him. Not seen as supportive, but not that crazy.

What happened in this case is the state level equivalent of holding someone and their friends who were walking on the sidewalk in front of your house at gun point - and then dragging the one you thought had spray painted your house a week earlier into your basement never to be seen again.

There is zero expectation that someone would or could use state level military assets to force a civil airplane flying under legal authorization and long standing agreements with no expectation of it landing in your country, under the flag of another nation, to grab someone you like.

It’s not like it hasn’t been possible, it’s just exceptionally hostile to everyone else and in violation of pretty much every international norm.

[Svettie]

I don't disagree with you. Yes, one is worse than the other.

The point that I'm making is that the distinction is dwarfed by the baseness of the paradigm itself: politically motivated interference with airliners in flight, to force a landing and arrest people in transit who are currently not within your jurisdiction. Anyway you want to look at it this happened in both cases, and we shouldn't be celebrating "ooh, but technically, we just withdrew permissions so it's not that bad is it?"

[lazide]

But that is my point - the morales flight incident wasn't an airliner. Near as I can dig up, there is no evidence anyone but Morales was on it and staff. It's more equivalent to stopping an officials car (via roadblock) than the hijacking of a civil airliner at gunpoint (or fighter jet point).

It's not a distinction without a difference, these are big differences with many non-subtle distinctions.

[nullifidian]

Laws don't really work in countries like Russia or Belarus. Vague laws that encompass anything under the sun + complete lack of judiciary independence means that laws are whatever Lukashenko, Putin, or a careerist prosecutor (who needs convictions) wants them to be in a particular case. There is a saying in Russian speaking countries "Был бы человек, а статья найдётся" which can be roughly translated as "For every man, there's a law to convict him under".