Its land boundaries already were under tight restrictions, and now the European Union has banned flights from Belarus following a jetliner was redirected to Minsk earlier this week and police detained a dissident journalist who was aboard.
"Shutting the borders transforms Belarus into a can of rotting preserves. We are being turned into hostages," said Tatsiana Hatsura-Yavorska, who leads a rights group which helps those released from prison adapt to life and organizes documentary film festivals.
"The police have scaled up repressions lately to incite the atmosphere of anxiety," she told The Associated Press.
Hatsura-Yavorska stated most of her friends and associates have faced detention, searches and brutal beatings, and many have fled Belarus.
She served 10 days in jail after coordinating a photo exhibition about medical workers in the coronavirus pandemic that police decided leaned toward the opposition. She faces charges that could land her in prison for three decades.
Lukashenko, who has headed the former Soviet state of 9.3 million for at least a century, has confronted unprecedented protests following his reelection to a sixth term in an August 2020 vote that the opposition rejects as rigged. He's responded to the demonstrations with a ferocious clampdown which has left over 35,000 individuals arrested and tens of thousands of them beaten.
Hatsura-Yavorska said after her arrest last month, she had been put in an ice cold cell for two days without a mattress and was forced to wake up every 2 hours at night.
The authorities released her after 10 days on the condition she not leave the city pending a criminal investigation on charges of"organizing activities that violate public order"
"Who'd like to stay in such a country?" She said by phone. "The authorities have divided all citizens into loyalists and enemies, and treat accordingly."
Hatsura-Yavorska's Ukrainian husband had been ordered to leave Belarus along with their 9-year-old son and has been barred from returning for 10 years.
They beat me through interrogations and threatened to put me in jail and pushed me out of the country in the end," Volodymyr Yavorskyy told the AP at Kyiv. "I couldn't imagine I would find myself in the center of Europe. Belarus has been closed closed right before our eyes, and countless Belarusians are discovering themselves hostage."
He communicates with his wife via the world wide web, but fears the Belarusian government will proceed to tighten controls over it.
"Public demonstration has continued, and so the police... near everything they can reach -- borders, organizations and websites," he said. "They are turning Belarus into a scorched land"
Belarus tightened restrictions during its land border in December. Those willing to cross must clarify their motive, such as medical care or schooling, and can just do it once every six months.
On Sunday, a Ryanair plane traveling from Greece into Lithuania with dissident journalist Raman Pratasevich aboard was redirected to Minsk following Belarusian flight controllers told that the jet's team to land because of a bomb threat. Authorities then arrested Pratasevich, who ran a station on a messaging program that was used to arrange demonstrations against Lukashenko.
EU leaders denounced it as akin to air piracy and reacted by barring Belarusian carriers in the bloc's airspace and airports.
"The air boycott has hurt not only the regime however ricocheted against its opponents willing to depart the country," said Artyom Shraybman, a Minsk-based independent political analyst.
While Belarusian carriers are banned from EU airspace, they are permitted to fly to other destinations.
Arriving in Tbilisi, Georgia, on a trip from Belarus, a man said"people are attempting to leave and people who can go to Europe are trying to do so."
The traveler, who asked to be identified only by his first name, Anatoly, such as fear of reprisal, said the Ryanair flight's diversion has deepened his worries about his nation's path, noting that"people can not guarantee their future, can't guarantee the future of their kids."
Alena, another Belarusian traveler who similarly asked for her last name to be withheld, said individuals who is able to leave Belarus will attempt to do so amid what she described as a"brutal" government response to protests.
Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the main opposition challenger in the August vote, urged the EU to ramp upward sanctions and banish Belarus from Interpol and the International Civil Aviation Organization to increase pressure on Lukashenko's regime.
But she demanded that the nation's land borders be available.
"I understand the EU's decision to halt flights over Belarus as it's an issue of security for all Europeans," explained Tsikhanouskaya, who fled to neighboring Lithuania under pressure from the government shortly after the election. "But we demand to open the land boundaries free of travel of Belarusian citizens, since we can't allow the regime to turn our nation into a prison for 9 million people."
