If we want to keep "the rules-based world" we should not violate those rules or use double standards.
There are rules, and there are reasons for those rules.
View attachment 495698
The first rule of the civilian aviation is quite simple: "Every State has complete and exclusive sovereignty over the airspace above it's territory".
If the EU (or any other state) don't like this rule - they may suggest to cancel this Convention, and to write another, starting, for example, with the words: "All air on the Earth belongs to the EU, and only the EU will decide who may ground airplanes, and who - may not." Sure, I very doubt that anybody will sign such a document.
It is amusing to see how people are becoming experts overnight in some convention they have never heard of before and reading only one chapter of it afterwards.
I am ready to repeat it for you once again - the issue is not about landing tha plane per se. The issue is the reason why this plane was landed.
What part of the sentence "Every State has complete and exclusive sovereignty over the airspace above it's territory" is unclear?
Ukraine has right to ground a Belorussian jet to arrest an anti-Maidan activist (or anybody else), Belorussia has right to ground an Irish jet to arrest a pro-Maidan activist (or anybody else). It is their land and air, and there are their laws.
You may like or hate their laws, you may like or hate their KGB, but Belorussian sovereignty over their airspace is complete and exclusive.
Does not matter how many Belorussian really voted for Lukashenko, does not matter was Protasevich "fighter for freedom" or "Nazi-militant", "traitor" or "real patriot", the right of Belorussian state to "keep order", arrest or even execute him - is absolute. That's what we call "state sovereignty". It is "inner affair" of Belorussia.