That’s actually a very good point, and why everyone should give a damn about stuff like this and not those directly involved.
Tighter sanctions against Belarus are a good start. But even more effective would be to 1) fund independent media and the democratic opposition in Belarus and 2) place sanctions on the Russian companies that own shares of Belarus’s largest firms.
The time for half-measures is over.
Oh, and also…
Current EU sanctions on Belarus apply to a mere 88 individuals there.
There should be EU travel sanctions on the top 1000 Belarusian officials.
They should not even be able to take a shopping trip to Poland or Lithuania.
And if, as a result, Westerners are no longer allowed to visit Minsk, that’s a sacrifice we will have to make. 
The press has overwhelmingly been talking about the arrest of the activist Raman Pratasevich but has paid little attention to the arrest of Sofia Sapega too:
That article seems to be a bit mistaken in calling EHU a “Belarusian university”:
So basically it’s a former Belarusian university, now in Lithuania, but with a student body that primarily attends classes remotely from Belarus. I think that calling it a “Belarusian university in Vilnius” isn’t incorrect. If Harvard abandoned all of its operations in the US and moved to a campus Calgary, but most of its students were Americans attending through remote classes, I would think it’s fair to call it an American university in Calgary.
I’m nitpicking though. 
There was a more directly precedential event a couple of decades earlier.
This was also the U.S., in case intercepting an Egyptian flagged airliner over international waters and forcing it (at threat of being shot down by warplanes) to land at a U.S.-Italian airbase to capture the terrorists who murdered an American on the cruise ship Achille Lauro.
More extreme in some ways than what Belarus did, but mostly a difference of degree, not kind.
Nothing wrong with that! But I would nitpick back at you that if Harvard had to leave the US because the US government deliberately shut it down, after which it was granted official university status in Canada, it would be more accurate to call it a “formerly American university” than an “American university”.
You are absulutely right, I had forgotten that.
IIUC, one result of European airlines no longer flying over Belarus is the loss to the government of the revenue from providing air traffic control services for flyovers, as well as landing fees and other payments for planes which actually land there.
I think Belarus will back down.
I doubt Lukashenko will back down, whatever the cost to Belarus.
Back down how?
By promising not to do that again? By paying Ryanair for their direct expenses from the event?
The idea that ICAO would have any leverage to obtain the release of their hostage is silly. If US / EU / UN gets behind a total economic cut-off of all things Belarussian I could see that working. Eventually.
Just as the US embargo of Cuba has so rapidly unseated the Castro brothers.
Russia, eagerly embracing the role of “enabling co-dependent”, begins to refuse landing rights to flights that choose to route around Belarussian air space.
We can go back to the Iron Curtain days pretty easily, and the current Soviet sphere countries have a lot more to lose from this transition than do the current Western sphere countries.
Some responses from Europe:
Our very own PM has urged KLM to no longer fly over Belarus. Probably with the MH17 drama still on his mind, not out of concern for what is happening there.
The story is that Russian air traffic controllers reported a bomb threat (conveniently and somewhat credibly by Hamas), sent a MiG to accompany the diverted plane to Minsk and once there arrested the journalist and his girlfriend. So it looks like Putin stepping in to protect his crony and his borders.
And that’s also the reason the European Union is somewhat reluctant when it comes to action: any pro - western activity in Ukraine or Belarus is considered a direct threat by Putin. We’ve already put strain on that relationship by airlifting Navalny to Berlin, thus thwarting his assassination. So we’re trading carefully I guess. There’s talk of more sanctulions but Belarus doesn’t really have any economie position with the EU, so It’s effect will be limited. At least that’s how I understood it. Addition and corrections welcome!
This. That was the same for Ukraine. EU is out of the question for former Soviet states. And Lukashenko is a useful idiot for Putin. So Putin steps in. And we draw up sanctions.
Are there any other topics you would like us to start threads about?
The West failed to set up disincentives that would stop Belarus from breaking international law. So here we are again:
If a state as weak as Belarus can engage in hybrid warfare against its neighbors without more serious consequences… what are China and Russia going to think?
Not to mention our own domestic terrorists wanting asylum there.
https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/us-capitol-rioter-seeks-asylum-belarus-state-tv-81055879