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What the Belarus plane interception could mean for Chinese dissidents
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AIRSPACE VIOLATIONS
For critics of the Chinese party-state the Belarusian authorities’ abuse of aviation rules to snatch a campaigning journalist and his girlfriend is both familiar and worrying news.
The authorities in Beijing have been kidnapping their opponents for years (the Swedish citizen Gui Minhai, abducted in Thailand in 2015, is just one example); next up may be this hapless teenage dissident trapped in Dubai, where he unwisely changed planes en route to the US.
Chinese pressure on Kazakhstan and Pakistan makes those countries now risky for refugees too. A Freedom House report in February cited more than 600 examples of what it calls “transnational repression.”