Other Regimes Will Hijack Planes Too
If Belarus gets away with it, authoritarian dictators around the world will have a new tool of oppression.
by Anne Applebaum
May 24, 2021
4 minutes
Even when our most basic civilizational values are in dispute, there are a few sets of rules and regulations that we nevertheless manage to share. The laws of the sea, for example, or the norms governing the conduct of air-traffic controllers. Pilots of any nationality, even when flying to Caracas, Havana, or Pyongyang, have no reason to believe that the instructions they receive from the ground are political or deceitful, or meant to achieve any purpose other than a safe landing.
Now the dictator of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, has shattered that basic assumption in a stunt with no exact precedent. Yesterday, aviation authorities there collaborated
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