Global Villagence: Blade Runners, Gaza/Ukraine Wars + No-Flyz’s.📌

Unfortunately, some of the world’s prime soft targets happen to be places and events we want to visit. But beyond cities, monuments, shrines, parks, shows or other gathering points, the most hazardous hotspots remain transport terminals and the modes that pass through them—more often than not airports, yet…

Gunners and Blade Runners.

(12/21/23)—With Middle East crises flaring anew, terror tensions are gripping streets and sites worldwide all the more, happenstance travelers often no less impacted than hostile and/or hapless targets.

Take recent Continental incidents, the latest being that semiautomatic firing madman taking at least 15 lives and injuring 25 others within Charles University, the Czech Republic’s bloodiest mass shooting in its history. The campus of this nation’s oldest, most eminent university is bordered by a densely visited tourist district, where fear and chaos reigned as nearby students were gunned down from a Charles’ rooftop, until the shooter, student David Kozak, 24, soon killed himself—like he already had his father.

This horrific tragedy too closely follows a knifing attack on Quai de Genelle of Central Paris, in the veritable shadow of the Eiffel Tower. There a 26-year-old French national of Iranian parentage stabbed a German traveler to death, then injuring a British tourist and two others across a Seine River bridge at 9 p.m. on a brisk Saturday evening.

Having earlier converted to Islam and pledged allegiance to ISIS, the assailant, apparently mentally unstable, was heard to have been shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ (God is greatest) as he attacked, decrying Muslims dying in Palestine and Afghanistan, and France’s complicity. Tasered and arrested, he had been under police surveillance, previously imprisoned for four years in 2016 after planning to join ISIS fighters in Syria.

In response to the knifings, President Emmanuel Macron deemed them a terrorist attack, denouncing the “de-civilization” of French society while updating France’s Fiche S watchlist and National Security Alert to the highest level. The ‘City of Lights’ street attack comes some two months after a school teacher north of Paris was fatally run through and another injured, allegedly for bon motting the prophet Muhammed.

Days before, a Syrian national had attacked six in the Alpine village of Annecy. Earlier in the year, hospital workers were stabbed in Reims with a kitchen knife, six people at the Gare du Nord railway station. All this echoing that 12-victim massacre of staffers at Charlie Hedbo satirical magazine offices by Islamic State terrorists in 2015—and so on and on…

This ‘evilcade’ is not to overlook terror attacks in the Netherlands, poisoning intrigues in London and all the mass killing mayhem throughout North America. All told, these are reasons enough to be evermore watchful and wary on the very streets where we travelers live…and way too often die these roily days. (MTC…)

Earlier Update: One Putrid Incursion: Witness the real-time war over Ukraine, where Russia has been blitzing Europe’s largest independent, democratic nation—the first major European land war since WWII. Vladimir Putin’s M.O. is to seize Ukraine’s principal airports, such as in Kyiv, Donetsk, Chernihiv and Zhytomyr; same time to ‘No-Fly Zone’ commercial flights out of the region’s embattled airspace, to which major European carriers like BA, Air France and Lufthansa had already halted service (incl. ‘ghost flights’). In response numerous Euro nations, from the UK to Estonia, Poland, Bulgaria (now blanket EU, some 36 nations and counting) have banned all Russian aircraft (whether owned, registered and/or controlled) from their skies, as has the US; but there’s no Ukraine ‘Close the Skies’ NFZ so far.

Otherwise, Delta Airlines, for one, has cut codeshare ties with Aeroflot, as carriers worldwide are dodging risky Russian airspace, tacking precious hours and miles onto their international routes. Resulting costs will surely to be passed along to us travelers, with a post-pandemic bookings lift already losing altitude. Moreover, planemakers Boeing and Airbus have suspended parts, maintenance and technical services to all Russian airlines.

This while 4 million+ Ukrainian citizens become refugees (10 million on the move)—desperately fleeing their towns and cities, sheltering in teeming metro stations, flocking toward western borders by overrun train, gridlocked road and trampled foot. Mainly women and children are rushing entry points from Poland to Romania and Moldova, picking through piles of used clothing against the freezing cold, scrapping for crisis/near starvation provisions—swarming, dragging luggage, doomscrolling with no particular place to go, much less hope of returning home. Grim scenes of heartbreaking rail station separations spread no end. Since Ukrainian men (ages 18-60) remain to fight for their homeland, under enemy fire and indiscriminate bombardment by Russian  troops, tanks, choppers, missiles and warplanes—the main Kyiv station itself being shelled.

Nevertheless, a growing number of those ‘refugees’ are returning to help save their country, as volunteers from other nations join the fight. Much more to come on how this tragic, brutal invasion will further impact Ukraine and the wider Continent, let alone Euro travel over coming weeks and months. 

In any case, vulnerable to the extreme are travelers like us, held captive in a constipated maze of attendant security checkpoints and watchlists: Some Ukraine, post-9/11 essential, others merely Kabuki/procedural placebos that aggravate and hinder travelers, yet have scarcely proven themselves preventative for all the chagrin and inconvenience they cause.

Here is where Vamigré fully enters the lines of fire…beginning with the recent fatal knife attacks on Paris’s traveler packed right bank, by a young Chechen who pledged ‘Allahu akbar’, was tied to ISIS, and had long been on terrorism watch lists. We’ll be tracking, tracing and vigilantly responding to terrorist threats portended and posed to Vamigrés the world over.

Belarus Hijacking: Courses Interruptus.

Update: 8/2/21—Minsk nearly extended its strong arm grab again—this time at Japan’s Olympics. If not for Poland issuing her an emergency humanitarian visa, sprinter Krystina Timanovskaya, 24, would have been forcibly plucked from Belarus’s track team by Lukashenko security agents, then hustled off to the airport and Minsk, accused of criticizing her coaches. Fearing for her safety, she appealed to the International Olympic Committee for help, and local police secured her in a Tokyo hotel overnight. She is currently being sheltered in the Polish embassy there, offered safe passage to Poland. (MTC…)

5/24/21—In the slipstream of major international airlines diverting from Ben Gurion Airport to avoid rocket attacks during the recent 11-day Israeli-Palestinian War comes the dubious bomb scare regarding Ryanair FR4978.

Belarus: The Unspeakable Happens.

Two cherished principles were hijacked this past weekend in the skies over Belarus. The Ryanair flight, en route from Athens, Greece to Vilnius, Lithuania with 171 aboard was nearing the Lithuanian border when it was ordered to divert and land in Minsk by Belarusian Air Traffic Control. Belarus authorities claim that they ordered the action due to reports of a security threat onboard the aircraft, enforcing the maneuver via a MiG-29 fighter jet escort.

Ryanair maintained “nothing untoward” was found explosives-wise during a search of the plane and baggage on the ground at Minsk Airport, and its flight was cleared to depart some five hours later. But FR4978 would be taking off at least two passengers lighter, because aboard the 737-800 had been journalist Roman Protasevich—who was detained with his Russian girlfriend, law student Sofia Sapega.

Seems he was wanted by the Belarus government on criminal charges in absentia relating to his activities during the country’s 2020 presidential election.

As a news editor at (Poland-based) Nexta Media Network, Protasevich fed and led the opposition effort to unseat 66 year-old President Alexander Lukashenko, who has hard ruled Belarus since 1994. Protasevich is accused of attacking ‘Europe’s last Dictator’ on Nexta’s Twitter and You Tube on Telegraph channels throughout the blistering campaign. Nevertheless, Lukashenko declared victory in a presumably rigged election despite fervent street protests, then proceeded to label Protasevich a terrorist. Belarus’s state-owned news agency revealed that Lukashenko himself ordered the Ryanair jet to be rerouted to Minsk, well over 250 miles off course.

Once at the capital’s airport, Belarus authorities removed the 26-year-old dissident from the plane and shackled him off to pre-trial detention. A shocked fellow passenger said Protasevich—who had fled Belarus two years earlier and now faced a 12 year prison term and worse—told him that if the flight landed in Minsk, “…they’ll execute me here.” A preliminary ‘confession’ video indicates the beatings have already begun; no word yet on his lady friend’s jeopardy, but a later video shows her also being held in detention…

It’s the Sky, Jack.

So much for freedom of speech, freedom of the skies: Amid a world of outrage at this illegal act of ‘state-sponsored terrorism’, the European Union has voiced particular alarm at Belarus’ forced diversion of an EU member airline traveling between two EU capitals with a likely planeload of EU-based passengers. And with rumors that two Russian KGB agents may have been planted on the flight, echoes of the Ukrainian Malaysian Airline disaster ring to mind. Little wonder the US State Department also condemns the act.

This, while the Belarusian Regime forges a sort of tourist trap—weaponizing migration by shoveling subcontinent migrants through to Balkan nation borders as revenge against heavy EU sanctions.

But beyond Lukashenko’s piracy play, unsettling global issues and questions arise: Was this act illegal on the face of it, in actual fact? Are international treaties and standards of air transport primacy and freedom of navigation equal to the threats of today? In how much peril were FR4978’s panicked passengers and crew—or all civilian flights and fliers, much less journalists and critics of other authoritarian regimes? Can we board a plane any longer without fearing that we or our seat mates might get plucked by some raiding uniforms? Does this unprecedented outlandish act set a new, dire precedent? Or does the Belarusian skyjacking just foreshadow the fatal 1970s takeover dramas all over again?

5/31/21—On that count, another Ryanair flight, this one from Dublin bound for Poland, was since diverted Sunday to Berlin’s airport after a ‘potential security threat onboard’ was transmitted to the crew by German air traffic control. Passengers on Flight FR901 were removed and security checked before being transferred to a spare Ryanair plane seven hours later for continuation on to Krakow. Copy that, or copycat?

Ramifications…and Redress?

5/26/21—Whatever, no doubt this skyjacking, said to be set in motion by those onboard KGB operatives fraudulently crying bomb scare to the Ryanair flight crew, was in violation of a network of treaties governing air travel between subscribing nations worldwide (including Belarus). Specifically it contravenes the 1944 Chicago Convention on International Civil Aviation and 1971 Montreal Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts Against the Safety of Civil Aviation. Since the Montreal accord includes Article 1(1)(e), which stipulates as an international crime when someone unlawfully and intentionally “communicates information (he/she) knows to be false, thereby endangering the safety of an aircraft in flight.” Moreover its Article 10 requires a state to be “in accordance with international and national law, endeavour to take all practicable measures for the purpose of preventing the offenses mentioned in Article 1.”

Lukashenko’s cynical ‘piracy’ action also breached the Chicago Convention’s Article 3bis(b)—providing that a state can only ground an aircraft transiting in its airspace by employing “appropriate means consistent with relevant rules of international law.” Further, as per a 1928 international justice ruling, “(Belarus) must, as far as possible, wipe out all the consequences of the illegal act and reestablish the situation which would, in all probability…have existed if that had not been committed.” In other words, Protasevich and Sapega must be released from Belarusian custody and allowed to continue to Vilnius as though the skyjacking never occurred.

Now whether any EU Commission and International Court of Justice (ICI) rulings prove to be enforceable and remedial is yet another question—as are the fates of the abducted journalist (a Belarus citizen) and his 23-year-old Russian companion. The EU, NATO and world leaders are already calling for and/or applying stiffer sanctions, asset seizures, travel red flags and bans on all EU carriers from entering Belarus air space or receiving flights leaving that country. Tit for tat: Belarus ally, Russia has since banned Air France and Austrian Airlines flights from landing in Moscow.

So we’ll see if such restrictions, judicial redress and growing global ire will pressure a desperate, isolated despot like Alexander Lukashenko to change his thuggish ways. (MTC…)