Twenty-three-year-old Danya * was sitting with her brother and his wife in Minsk’s Independence Square on Monday, when men dressed in black forced them into a delivery van.
The trio wore white ribbons, symbols of opposition to the re-election of the President of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, who was widely condemned as fraudulent. The official election results, released the day before and discussed by Protestants, showed that Lukashenko received 80.23% of the vote, while .hy opposition challenger, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, received only 9.9%.
The men forced the group to remove their ribbons, telling them that if they reappeared in the square, they would be immediately imprisoned.
“When they took us, I did not understand why, and I was obviously scared,” she told the Guardian via a communications app. ‘They held us for about 20 minutes, then they let us go, but my brother said,’ Belarus is alive, ‘and he was taken prisoner again and taken away. Later he called, and told me to get to a bus stop. The men were there, and they took my phone, started by looking at the photos and told me I was voting for the wrong person. ”
Earlier in the week, the country’s internet was shut down, an activity of movements said the aim was to silence them and prevent them from organizing. Hundreds of people using VPN and messaging apps came in contact with the Guardian in response to a call for their experiences.
“I want people to know the truth,” Danya said. “We are afraid to go out and we need help.”
According to Minsk residents, thousands of people are still in custody after being arrested while peacefully protesting against the election result. Many say the detainees are being tortured, with 20 or even 50 people being held in cells designed for just four. Others have said the detainees were denied food.
Official figures showed that 6,000 people were held from Wednesday morning, but reporters at the scene suggested that this night had grown to 7,000.
Katina *, a lawyer in Minsk who works to support the detainees, said: “Many people are being held captive. There are people who go out to throw out the trash, but because they do not have their passports are detained. We do not know where they are.
‘People are being released from prisons at four or five in the morning, and their belongings are not being returned to them. The volunteers who are waiting for them cannot go near the prison or the place of arrest, or they are also arrested.
“Yesterday they started stopping cars and hitting and arresting the drivers,” she added. “When they hit people, they do it for others because they want to spread that fear.”
Katina helps set up a platform to connect lawyers, to work pro bono, with those who are detained. “For those lawyers, it is a big risk. “Before they risked their license, now they risk their lives,” she said.
Katina also said that those who opposed the election result had fired many of their jobs. “Some people have been fired from the police and prisons for refusing to carry out orders or to start small initiatives. [to help detainees]. Many teachers were fired because they refused to sign the protocol on election results, “she said.
“We do not know how many, we think hundreds and thousands. It started mainly after the election, but it happened earlier when people showed support for independent candidates. ”
According to accounts of those on the scene, protests have shrunk as police brutality mounts.
Katina said people on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday ‘people had hope and faith for future changes’, but this had decreased. “It was so beautiful, and then they were scared to death,” she said.
One of those ‘angry and scared’ by events is Anastasia *, who fled with her husband Minsk on Tuesday after the offices of her IT company were evacuated following attacks on nearby businesses.
Colleagues encouraged her to delete all social media and browsing history, following reports that authorities would seize phones and use Facebook groups as the news sites people have received as evidence to hold them accountable.
Protests have erupted around the couple’s city center apartment. “On Sunday evening, after the election results were released, we saw a lot of people walking in crowds in the street. Just running, that’s it, and cars hung, ‘she said.
‘Then we saw the cars of the special forces, cars I had never seen in my life, with enormous shields for them to disperse people, and then came black cars without number plates. We saw the doors open, and special forces began to come out of them, chasing the Protestants down the street. One man was chased and beaten, and then they took him in a car and left. ‘
In the reflection of her windows, Anastasia saw explosions, “like fireworks,” and heard shots. Like others who spoke with the Guardian, Anastasia said armed teams in ambulances had arrived to approach nearby protesters without suspicion arising before jumping out and arresting them.
“They just hold people tight, they don’t need a specific reason,” she said. ‘If they want to do it, they’ll put you in jail. There is no law anymore, the law does not work. ”
Hours on Thursday, Viktar *, who had been an independent observer in the election, stood with hundreds of others in a chain chanting over the capital. He said activists linked weapons in silent protest.
Viktar said he had seen the election fraud for himself: at some polling stations he and his team of observers had counted and photographed the number of voters, but when they checked their numbers against data from the official election commission, it turned out to have added hundreds of votes.
He said votes were cast by the police and that votes changed in those for Lukashenko. “There is nowhere to go for help for the people of Belarus,” he said. “People are just intimidated because at the moment, almost every household has oppressed someone in one way or another: beaten, abducted, or seen these atrocities where they live.”
‘I was at one protest on Wednesday, where the policeman fired rubber bullets at people and threw grenades. There was a lot of blood, ‘he said. “Almost everyone in this area was beaten or escaped.”
At the IT company where he works, three people have been arrested in his department of 12, and two are still in jail.
“It’s awful,” Viktar said. “It’s like a war.”
* Names have changed
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