PEople detained in recent days of unrest in Belarus have told the Guardian about systematic abuse and mistreatment, suggesting that guards and police officers loyal to Alexander Lukashenko’s regime have thousands of Belarusians. Russians have terrorized those caught in the attack on recent protests.
Those detained in police stations, prisons and inmates spoke of ritual slaughter, until 55 women were locked up in a cell meant for two men and men who were held in stressful positions for hours. Leaked audio files and other testimonies have confirmed reports of widespread torture as Lukashenko tries to hold on to power.
One 31-year-old builder from Minsk, who asked not to be named, described arrest at 6pm on Sunday night, a few hours before interviews were closed, after filming a column of police in central Minsk.
For the first few hours he was treated well, but was then transferred to a notorious holding center on Okrestina Street on the outskirts of Minsk, where he was placed in a cell intended for four people who eventually had 21 men inside. as more and more were arrested in the evening.
After two days in which he received water but no food and the screams of people who were beaten inside the house could be heard, he was forced to sign a paper with false information about where and when he was arrested. He was then sentenced to 11 days in prison on probation. A few hours later, at 3 a.m. on Wednesday morning, he was told he could leave.
‘They called me to the exit, but then in the courtyard riot police with their covered faces told us to lie on the floor and then they started beating us. They hit me with batons all over my body. Then they punched me. Then they told us to get up to see if we could get up. I did not really know what happened. ”
One of the policemen said, “I hope you do not need a revolution anymore,” before the men were released into the dark. They were not given back their phones or other belongings.
Numerous people had similar stories. Kristina, a business consultant from Minsk, was arrested on Monday along with her husband while searching for her son who was arrested earlier that evening by guards with automatic rifles.
In the same holding center on Okrestina Street, she described being forced to strip naked with 10 women on camera. Later, she was taken to a room where 10 men, also naked, were forced to kneel on the floor while being beaten.
“I can’t say if it was with straps or with batons,” she said in an interview. “They told us not to look … I remember the sound of the strikes and their crazy rains.”
Many of the people she encountered were mothers and fathers looking after their own children. One 17-year-old girl was arrested along with her parents. “She saw that she was slapping her own father before her eyes.”
The women were tied up in a 10-meter cell for two who eventually swelled to 55 inmates, some of whom had serious medical conditions such as diabetes. She was released Thursday morning at 5 p.m., and asked that her last name not be used because her husband is still in jail. “It’s a discovery for me that there are people with nothing human in them,” she said, capturing her voice. “Even animals do not do what they did.”
Audio recorded outside the prison captured the sounds of beatings and the cries of those held inside, while state television made no secret of the abuse, broadcasting images of severely wounded prisoners in an attempt to scare people away. ‘ to stay the streets.
Igor Rogov, an activist for Open Russia, an NGO led by former Russian oligarch-turned-exile Mikhail Khodorkovsky, was arrested in Minsk on Sunday and released on Monday. He described repeated beatings, which intensified when he asked to contact the Russian embassy. ‘My head is still ringing, there’s an herb in my ears, I’m trapped, a traumatic brain injury, a pretty serious one,’ said the doctor. “I’m still sick, my legs and arms are sore, I have bruises all over my body,” he said.
There has been violence across the country, and 25-year-old Alexander Vikhor was killed last week when he died in police custody in the town of Gomel, his family told local media on Thursday.
Numerous journalists have reported attacks, even after showing their identification and accreditation. Yan Roman, a journalist who worked for Polish media in the city of Grodno, said he went to the local police department on Sunday night to report on people looking for lovers who were arrested when riot police raided and began to arrest everyone. He shouted that he was a journalist, but was kicked in the face by one policeman, and lost four teeth. He was then held for 24 hours and released with a fine.
Nikita Telizhenko, a Russian reporter for the Znak website arrested in Minsk on Monday, wrote a gruesome report of his time in custody. Men were piled on top of each other inside the detention facility: “People were lying in blood on the floor, and we had to run over them,” he wrote.
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