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Belarusian activist S. Latypav, who has been detained for more than six months, told a court hearing on June 1 that he had received threats that his leadership from the Interior Ministry for the Fight against Organized Crime and Corruption (GUBOP) he would stop his father.
“Father! After the meeting, GUBOP came to see me. They promised that if I did not plead guilty, I would be found in a pressure cell and lawsuits would be brought against my relatives and neighbors. I was already in the pressure cell for 51 days. Therefore, get ready, ”exclaimed S. Latypavas in court and tried to kill himself.
According to human rights defenders and former prisoners, the “torture chambers” in Belarusian prisons are called “Radio Free Europe”.
Siarhei Uscin of the NGO Legal Initiative, which helps draft complaints to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), told Current Time that people are sent to those cells to extract violent confessions from them.
„Reuters“ / „Scanpix“ nuotr./Sciapanas Latypavas
Mikhail Zhamchuzhny, a human rights activist who spent 6.5 years in prison on politically motivated charges, said that all pre-trial detention centers have such a cell, even if it is contrary to international law.
According to M. Žamčužinas, the dimensions of such chambers are 4×6 meters, they are completely soundproof. In other cases, conventional cameras and loud music are used to drive away the screams of detainees.
The detainees know very well that such cameras exist and the fear that they will be sent to them is enormous.
“I have seen convicts or defendants confess at the pressure cell door,” Žamčužinas told Radio Free Europe.
According to human rights activists, some are trying to avoid pressure cells to harm themselves: detainees are hospitalized due to open and bleeding wounds and torture takes at least a while.
According to M. Žamčužinas, some detainees try to pass the pressure chamber test, but how they do so depends on their will and resistance to threats.
Such threats particularly affect those who were detained in Belarus last year after mass protests against the autocrat Aliaksanndra Lukashenko.
VIDEO: Special issue: unprecedented tension on the Lithuanian-Belarusian border
Alesia Kachanouskaja told Free Europe Radio in May that her son Yuhen Kachanouski had been beaten until he admitted the charges against him for participating in the protest.
“His testimony was removed. When they began to threaten to put him in a pressure cell, he surrendered and confessed,” he said.
In court, Kachanouski said he was innocent and confessed to having confessed because he was under psychological and physical pressure.
“The police hit me on the abdomen, head, legs, threatened to send me to the pressure cell if I did not deliver the evidence they demanded. I signed the confession without even reading it, because I was afraid that they would hit me again, “J. Kachanouskis said in court.
However, he was found guilty of participating in mass riots and sentenced to more than 3.5 years in prison.
VIDEO: Detainees in Belarus spoke of incomprehensible cruelty: “You could hear people being beaten outside all night.”
According to Uscin, the torture of the protesters did not stop: although most of the torture took place between August 9 and 13, “detainees are still being tortured today, they are still being tortured in prisons.”
“There are many cases where people are told in court that they have been beaten to confess,” he said, adding that the courts did not pay attention to this.
A Belarusian who went to Lithuania 15 minutes setthat both he and other detainees at the beginning of the protests had been beaten.
“If you do not agree to hand over your phone, they will take you to a basement where there is a cell phone camera where you beat people. Those who beat come in turns. After 10-15 minutes, they get tired, they go out to smoke, new officers come, they bring other people they beat, ”said the man, who did not want to reveal his identity.
He assures that he has signed a protocol accusing him of organizing mass disturbances: “Then he has a choice: if he agrees to sign the protocol, he will shut up and give up the phone, he will not hit you. If he doesn’t agree, they will take him to the basement and beat him hard. “
Another Belarusian confronting Belarusian law enforcement and fleeing the country 15 minutes He said its methods of operation are somewhat different from those used in the 1990s: “Then, first, sticks were used.”
“Now it seems to them that the most effective thing is to put pressure on the family, relatives and friends of the detainee. Parents are afraid first.
Even when people flee the country for fear of arrest, their families are first visited by officials. They are trying to create an atmosphere in which a person feels guilty that other people are suffering for their actions, ”he said.
After the announcement in August last year that the autocrat A. Lukashenko was reelected president, massive protests began in the country, suppressed by the repression. More than 35,000 have been arrested since the protests began. people.
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