On January 31, the ICAO Council will hold a debate on the organization's report on the Ryanair hijacking incident in the Belarusian airspace. Sviatlana Tsikhanouksaya addressed a letter to the President of the Council concerning the events in Belarus since 2020. The letter reminds that since the hijacking, two people – Raman Pratasevich and Sofia Sapega – have been held hostage.
In the letter, Sviatlana Tsikhanouksaya:
– noted that the incident was a deliberate, pre-planned, cool-headed operation to arrest an opponent of the regime, and Belarusian officials from the very beginning were providing false information about what had happened. “The situation of utter disregard for human lives and disrespect for rules that was experienced by the crew and the passengers onboard Flight 4978 was shocking to the world. But to Belarusians, such disdain was not surprising. We have been subjected to this treatment before, during, and after the incident and on a national scale”, Tsikhanouksaya commented in the letter;
– urged ICAO to endorse the position that the regime's withholding of evidence could be considered as complicity in the deliberate obstruction of the organization's investigation. “The regime has never tried to critically assess this event, comfort passengers, or apologize for the stress and inconvenience to the Ryanair crew and company. Faced with a barrage of criticism, it never tried to analyze systemic inconsistencies and come up with improvements to prevent similar situations in the future. On the contrary, from the beginning officials chose to present a false narrative, attempted to distract and divert attention from the regime’s responsibility, smeared the pilots of Flight 4978, and ridiculed the response from the international community”, Tsikhanouksaya noted;
– emphasized that in the United States, an indictment has been filed against the leadership of the “Belaeronavigatsia” state-owned enterprise and two employees of the state security service in connection with conspiracy to commit piracy of an aircraft, which endangered four US citizens who were aboard;
– called to attach to the ICAO report evidence provided to the Polish authorities by material witness Oleg Galegov – an air traffic controller who was in the air traffic control tower during the entire time of the operation to force Flight 4978 to land in Minsk;
– urged to send the report to the President of the United Nations Security Council, as the incident became a threat to international peace and security. “This incident must not become a precedent to be used by other regimes and political forces to forcibly divert other flights for political reasons. It must not reflect detrimentally on the core interests of the safety of the passengers and crew”;
– encouraged to make the ICAO report public and discuss her letter at the ICAO Council debate on January 31, as well as ensure that the report is only the first step to start the investigation into the hijacking.
