Belarus has sparked international outrage by intercepting a Ryanair flight with a fighter jet to arrest opposition blogger Roman Protasevich.

He joins hundreds locked up in a crackdown after last August’s mass protests against the country’s dictatorial president Alexander Lukashenko, with authorities saying 400 opponents were convicted up to March.

We look at how Lukashenko has stifled dissent by jailing journalists and activists or forcing them into exile.

Lukashenko seeks a sixth term as leader in elections last August, with several popular opposition candidates also standing for the first time. They include blogger Sergei Tikhanovsky and a former banker Viktor Babaryko.

In the run-up to the poll Lukashenko, who has ruled Belarus with an iron grip since 1994, is rattled.

Tikhanovsky is detained on May 29 on charges of violating public order. He faces 15 years in prison.

Two days later Mikola Statkevich, an historic opposition figure, is detained.

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In June Babaryko is arrested. Accused of receiving bribes and money laundering, he goes on trial on February 17, 2021.

Babaryko’s closest aide, Maria Kolesnikova, emerges as one of the protest leaders. She is arrested on September 8 and jailed after refusing to go into exile.

On Friday, local media report that activist Vitold Ashurok of the “For Freedom” group died from a heart attack in a penal colony in the east of the country. He was 50.

And on Tuesday, Belarus sentences seven activists, including senior opposition figure Pavel Severinets, to jail terms of four to seven years, for taking part in “mass unrest”.

In early 2021 the crackdown turns to the media.

On February 18, a pair of journalists, Katerina Bakhvalova and Daria Chultsova, from opposition channel Belsat, are sentenced to two years in prison for covering one of last year’s protests.

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A fortnight later a court hands a six-month jail term to journalist Katerina Borisevich, who was accused of leaking the medical records of a protester who died during the demonstrations.

Two other Belarusian journalists, including a freelance reporter for German broadcaster Deutsche Welle, are then jailed for 20 days in mid-May, and complain of torture in pre-trial detention.

On May 18, the country’s largest independent news outlet Tut.by says that around 15 of its employees — including journalists, editors and accountants — have been detained in a raid of its offices, during which its site is shut down.

Following his dramatic arrest after his flight is forced to land in Minsk on Sunday, blogger and journalist Protasevich is shown by Belarusian state television “confessing” to charges of organising mass unrest in a 30-second video.

Some 34 media workers are currently being held, the Belarus Association of Journalists says.

Opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who emerges as the face of the protests, has lived in exile in Lithuania since August 11, two days after the disputed election.

A political novice, she only entered the fray after her husband Tikhanovsky was jailed. She claimed victory against Lukashenko and called on him to give up power.

“It’s clear that my departure was not voluntary,” she told AFP in late September.

Veronika Tsepkalo, whose husband was also forced into exile after trying to stand against Lukashenko, also fled.

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She made the move when Lukashenko’s regime began to crack down during the final days of the campaign, arresting a dozen of their collaborators. The couple were eventually forced to go to Poland.

Olga Kovalkova, a lawyer, also went to Poland. She said she was arrested, threatened by the KGB intelligence agency and then set free at the Polish border.

Pavel Latushko, a former culture minister who joined the opposition, also took refuge in Poland.

Blogger Protasevich fled to Europe in 2019 and from there co-ran the Nexta Telegram channels, a key Belarus opposition media that helped mobilise protesters.

He lived between Lithuania and Poland along with the other co-founder of the channel Stepan Putilo. In late 2020, Minsk asked Poland to extradite the two journalists.