Amaryllis Fox

Amaryllis Fox Instagram – Roman is a 26-year-old activist, who has been organizing peaceful protests against an abusive dictatorship since he was age 15. His girlfriend, Sofia, is a law student, focused on human rights.
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For the crime of helping young people to speak out peacefully against state violence, Roman was surveiled, named a terrorist and forced to flee for his life.
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He applied for asylum in Europe and believed himself finally safe to write about his dreams of freedom. Then, yesterday, Roman and Sofia were pulled from the sky.
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Traveling on an Irish airliner between two European cities, their plane was diverted and forced to land by fighter jets, scrambled at the orders of the very dictator Roman has spent his teens and twenties organizing protests against.
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Right now, they sit in chains in Minsk, facing brutal interrogation for the crime of peaceful protest.
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Make no mistake. This was an act of international piracy, undertaken by a draconian tyrant.
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But also remember this. That tyrant is scared. So scared of two students in their twenties that he had to deploy multi-million dollar fighter jets and hijack an international flight to silence their young voices.
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This horror in Belarus is not the first time we have seen autocrats brought to their knees by the peaceful protests of young people. And it will not be the last.
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But every outrageous use of force against the young, vocal and innocent is another reminder of youth power. Because if young people protesting peacefully in the streets did not wield the power to wipe the strongmen from the map, those strongmen would not deploy their jets and bombs to shut young voices down.
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May we stand with Roman, Sofia, and the young and righteous across the globe tonight. And may we remember that older leaders may seem all powerful, but they hold this Earth in trust for the citizens of tomorrow. It is young people’s lives that will be most profoundly shaped by the mistakes we make today. And it is their voices we must amplify in the battle for a brighter dawn.
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#RomanProtasevich #SofiaSapega #Belarus #IntergenerationalJustice #Now | Posted on 25/May/2021 05:37:06