This is today's new world order. Journalists, dissidents and critics who reside in democracies can be renditioned and hidden away at the order of authoritarian states. Whether it is Turkey kidnapping or targeting people in Europe, or Iran ordering assassinations of dissidents in Europe, or civilian airliners being shot down by Iran or rebels in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, or journalists being nabbed, there are fewer and fewer protections these days.

If authoritarian regimes might once have thought twice about hiding away journalists or even releasing them to Western countries, today it is the opposite. Critics are hunted. People are not safe in Europe, or even while flying at 30,000 feet. They can be poisoned on the streets of the UK, or be kidnapped by Turkey and be made to disappear or stabbed or blown up on orders from Tehran.

There was no pretense that Ryanair flight 4978 wouldn’t obey Belarus's orders, even thought it was making its descent to destination in Lithuan and it was diverted to Minsk. No explanation was given. Passengers were taken off and several disappeared. Whereas during the Entebbe hijacking in 1976, Air France's heroic crew remained behind with the kidnapped hostages, in this case, the flight simply left without the people who had been taken away. A statement issued later by the airline didn’t mention any missing passengers.

Today you can be disappeared without a trace and nothing will be done for you by democracies. Reuters reported that one man “said he could not be sure if Protasevich's companion, who took a laptop and phone, had also been detained in Minsk, but there appeared to be more empty seats when the plane left Minsk for Vilnius than when it took off from Athens.”

Today there are less people like Michel Bacos, the captain of Air France 193 which was hijacked and taken to Entebbe. He stayed with the passengers who were forcibly taken off. He passed away in 2019. Today, airlines let their passengers be seized and don’t even mention it. Tyler Rogoway, aviation expert, noted online that “unless there are massive consequences for this Ryanair-Belarus ordeal, we will see copycats. Want to get your hands-on a dissident or person of state propaganda value? If they ever pass over your airspace you now have a way to grab them. This cannot stand.”

Most authoritarians regimes are watching the outcome of the Belarus grounding of the flight using armed combat aircraft to see what will happen. Democracies may now know that airlines flying from one democracy to another over dictatorships can have their flights diverted and passengers shaken down or taken away without question or repercussions.

The praise that has been issued by authoritarian countries generally reflects a belief that Western democracies won’t do much to protect people. It also raises questions about how and why foreign intelligence services are generally able to act so freely in democratic European states, following and tracking dissidents and maybe even getting a hold of passenger manifests on airlines.