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June 4th, 2021 
Awake Goy 
Belarus journalist Roman Protasevich, who was arrested last month after his plane was forced to land in Minsk, has confessed to plotting anti-government protests in a tearful TV interview that his family say was conducted under duress.
In his third public appearance 10 days after he was arrested, Mr Protasevich recanted his previous criticism of president Alexander Lukashenko and praised him. He said he changed his views about the veteran leader as he “began to understand that he was doing the right thing and I certainly respect him”.
The family of the 26-year-old journalist, activists and opposition groups say the interview was conducted under duress and called it an act of “propaganda”.
The one-and-a-half hours-long interview was broadcast by state-run television channel ONT on Thursday evening and has been met with an outcry on social media, with several users expressing concerns that he may have been abused in prison.
Mr Protasevich was co-founder and former editor of the opposition Telegram channels Nexta and Nexta Live. The channel has close to two million subscribers and played a key role in galvanising anti-government protests last year.
The large-scale protests erupted after Mr Lukashenko was returned to power on 9 August in a presidential election which the opposition claimed was riddled with fraud.
Mr Protasevich was arrested in Belarus on 23 May after a Ryanair plane he was travelling on was intercepted by fighter jets and made to perform an emergency landing in Minsk following an alleged bomb threat. The European jetliner was travelling from Greece to Lithuania.
At the end of the interview, Mr Protasevich burst into tears, covering his face with his hands and said he had hoped to get married and have children one day.
He said he was speaking on the channel by his own will.
“In many moments, (Lukashenko) acted like a man with balls of steel,” Mr Protasevich said in the interview.
His father Dmitry Protasevich said that it pained him to watch the interview and claimed he was forced to confess. He added that it was a result of “abuse, torture and threats”.
“I know my son very well and I believe that he would never say such things. They broke him and forced him to say what was needed,” he told AFP.
Franak Viacorka, an adviser to Belarus opposition leader Svetlana Tsikhanouskaya, said in a tweet: “It’s painful to see the ‘confessions’ of Raman Pratasevich. His parents believe he was tortured. This is not Raman I know. This man on Goebbels’ TV is the hostage of the regime, and we must make all possible [efforts] to release him and the other 460 political prisoners.”
Before releasing the interview, the ONT channel released a trailer of what it said would be an “emotional” spectacle.
Mr Protasevich’s arrest along with his Russian girlfriend Sofia Sapega, 23, led to an international outcry with some European leaders calling the forced emergency landing of the plane a “state hijacking”. He was arrested as the EU was already set to discuss toughening sanctions against Belarus over its violent crackdown on dissent during the protests.
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