“If you die, we don’t care”

This is how detainees are bullied in Belarus

14 August 2020 | Elizaveta Fokht, Anna Pushkarskaya, Oksana Chizh, BBC

18+. Attention: the text contains graphic descriptions of violence.

After protests in Belarus, which began after the presidential elections, thousands of people were detained, arrested, and bullied. Many were beaten, humiliated, and starved. BBC spoke with several people who were subjected to cruel treatment in Belarusian police vans, prisons and police departments.

Alina Beresneva, 20 years old

On the night of 10 August, my friends and I were returning from downtown Minsk and were attacked by riot police OMON. We didn’t participate in the protest, but they knocked me to the ground anyway. There are still scratches on my arm. And we were packed into a bus.

We were brought to Akrescina (to the detention center of the Main Internal Affairs Directorate of the Minsk City Executive Committee. A man standing at the entrance kept saying: “C*nts, move faster!” I asked: “Why are you talking to us like that?” He took me by the neck and kicked me into the wall, saying: “Bitches, inspect the floor, you will know where to walk, where to stroll.”

Twelve girls and I were put in a cell for four. We asked the employee if it was possible for us to make a call, if it was possible to call a lawyer, to which he replied: “Have you watched too many American movies? This is not America, you are not entitled to anything.”

The night passed, around noon they began counting us, asking for our first and last names. We have not eaten for more than a day, everyone had stomachaches, everyone was hungry, so we started asking for food. We were ready to pay for it. They answered: “No, c*nts, you will learn who to vote for.” We were terribly shocked by their response. It was awful.

Evening came. Through a gap between the food tray slot and the door, we began to notice that people were lead out and forced to sign something, although they were shouting and protesting. It was our turn to sign these records. The girls and I agreed to deny anything additional that was being attributed to us.

I tried to familiarize myself with the record, began to read it. I said: “Let me, please, familiarize myself with what I am signing.” The answer was: “I’ll tell you now, c*nt. Sign quickly, otherwise I’ll ****** [rape you] and put you in jail for another 20 days.” I was in shock, my tears were streaming down my face, their traces remained on that record. I signed “I agree”, marked my signature, and did not even know what I was signing for.

We were promised that they would let us go that same day. We thought that we would forget about everything like a bad dream, but that was not to be. We were taken back to the cells, then moved to another one where there were already 20 girls. There were 33 of us in total. It was complete mockery.

Period when there was no food was the worst. I am a strong person. But they broke me with that. I just sat there; my stomach was hurting so much that I did not know what to do. I just sat there and watched my body trying to cope with this, but failing. And I just sat there like a child. I was angry, but I had no strength, and no one would help.

I didn’t know what to do, just sat there curled up in fetal position. I started breaking out in a cold sweat, and they called a doctor. I barely got up and said through this food tray slot: “You see, I cannot stand, I feel sick, my head is spinning.” She said: “You will learn where to walk next time.” I was eventually given a validolum pill on an empty stomach. Of course, I didn’t take it so as not to make myself feel worse.

Another night passed. We decided that if they don’t bring us food, we would start screaming and calling for help. On 11 August, more police vans arrived. We saw through the window the guys being bullied. They stood there almost half-naked on their knees with their behinds up in the air and their hands behind their heads. If someone stirred, they beat them with truncheons.

One of our girls got her period. She asked: “Please give me some toilet paper.” She was told: “Wipe yourself with your shirt.” In the end, she would just take off her underwear, wash it and use it until it got dirty again. Then, after the shift change, a woman eventually brought us toilet paper. We idolized her.

The windows faced the street. We saw people shouting, “Let our children go!” In the next cell, there was a man who screamed a lot, he had issues with his leg. For three days they would not call him an ambulance. He could not bear it and started shouting out of the window so that people could hear him. So the police officer opened the door (you could hear it well), started beating him and saying: “C*nt, warm up your ass, I’ll push your blood back into your anus.”

If there was an opportunity to somehow punish those people, I would gladly do it. Life is divided into a before and an after. I used to want to study at the Academy of the Interior Ministry, be a police officer, protect the people, and human rights, but after having been in there I no longer want this. Now I just want to leave this country, take all my family and friends with me, so as not to stay here.

Sergei, 25 (name changed at his request)

I was taken in a police van – there were about 20 of us, thrown in one on top of another. An Omon guy walked over us, they pressed their boots into our necks, we were suffocating. People were getting swollen hands from the handcuffs – and if one complained they would hit his hands.

There was an asthmatic among us, he was gasping for breath. The Omon guy pressed his boot on his neck and said “if you croak we don’t care”.

One guy didn’t want to unlock his phone. They stripped him and said that if he didn’t reveal his password they’d rape him with batons. So he agreed.

They yelled at me and told me to crawl, which I did slowly, and they kept on beating me. That carried on for some time, then some others were thrown on top of me, I could hardly breathe. When I was pushed up against a wall I realised I was bleeding from a head wound. I passed out a few times.

The doctors know people are being tortured, they try to get them out. In all I was given 12 stitches for three wounds, I had surgery and they took x-rays. After a few hours in hospital my friends collected me.

Oleg, 24 years old (name changed at his request)

I am a long-haul trucker, I have nothing to do with politics, I am not an enemy of the people. I came back a week ago from a trip to Siberia. I looked at what was happening online, saw that the children and grandmothers go out. I thought to myself – I am a young guy, will I just sit at home? And so I went too.

I was detained [on the night] of 11 August, closer to midnight. A clap could be heard not far from me. It stunned me. I saw a guy lying on the ground. I wanted to help him up, but his leg was practically torn off. A flashbang grenade landed right onto the kneecap, his kneecap was gone.

The phone fell out somewhere, so I ran away to look for an ambulance. One was driving by, so I asked the doctors to drive up. They asked me and a few other guys to stay and help. About twenty meters away were riot policemen from OMON with shields, weapons, machine guns.

They did not take us away, and told others not to touch us. And then they ran up from behind, put us down quickly, beat us over the legs. They put out hands behind out heads, and kicked us with their feet. The doctor tried to explain: “What are you doing, we can’t manage here, these people are helping!”

Then they lifted us up on our feet, but after a minute and a half they ran up again and beat us with truncheons. They beat us on the way to the police van, in the police van. Shouted: “You f*cking bastards.” They beat us with their feet, hands; we received blows all over our bodies. There was a 50-year old disabled man with us. He asked for a pill, said that he felt sick. He was constantly beaten.

When the big compartment in the police van was full, they began to sort us into small ones – six people into each one. There was no air to breathe and only a small window. We sat in this smoke for an hour and a half. After that we were taken to Akrescina. As we were running out of the van, a corridor of police officers and riot policemen lined up. As we ran to the fence, they beat us. They were smiling and saying: “Did you want changes? There will be changes for you!”

For an hour and a half we stood on our knees with heads bowed in front of a concrete fence. There were stones on the ground, my knees are still blue all over. If someone complained, they beat him. One man shouted that he was an FSB (Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation) officer. He was surrounded, kicked in the solar plexus, and beat with truncheons by five men or so. The reporter from Russia was beaten, he screamed horribly. They beat people up for any question.

I did not think about anything while I was standing there. I felt very sorry for the people who were beaten, and also received blows periodically. Then they took us into the building, and continued beating us with truncheons while we ran to hand over our belongings. After that we were forced into the exercise yard. There were about a hundred and thirty people there with everyone standing one on top of the other. Once every two hours, ten people were taken to the toilet, and once an hour they gave us two two-liter bottles of water. Some did not even have a chance to look at these bottles before they were empty.

Then they took us out outside again beating us on the way. They made us kneel down and interrogated us. Then everyone was sent back to the cell. While we were running there, we continued to receive blows. There were 120 people in the cell; during the 24 hours we were given only water and one loaf of bread for everyone.

The trials were next morning. By then there were about 25 people in the cell. At the trial they agreed to release me without formal detention. But after that they still kept me until the evening. My personal belongings were not found; they promised to give them back later. They took me outside, where I saw a group of guys lying face down. They were beaten, they screamed. And their relatives were standing on the other side of the fence.

The policeman who was standing with us said that it was horrible, it was terrifying. When they took us out through the backyard, we were told that if we went up to the crowd where there were relatives and the press, they would take us away and we would be blue in color. But when we exited, people ran up to us like we were heroes – they offered cigarettes, let us call our relatives. Consequently, my legs, back and shoulder blades are severely injured.

Marylia, 31 y.o.

On 12 August my friends and I were coming back home by car on the empty avenue – there were no traffic jams anymore in Minsk like during the first days of protests when the cars were blocked. And we were stopped and asked to move to the side of the road by a traffic police officer not far away from Stele where people gathered on the election day. There were a few police vans (minibuses – BBC) apart from the traffic police car there. People dressed up in black protective uniforms and black balaclavas came closer to us – it seemed like they had Internal Ministry stripes, but I didn’t discern it for sure. There were many of them, and three of them came to our car. They didn’t introduce themselves, they just told us to come out of the car. 

We were told to unlock our phones, and these officers started to check what pictures and videos were there. I was taken aside, and the guys were pushed to stand with their hands on the car. The guys unlocked their phones, and there were videos of cars standing in traffic jams, etc. from previous nights. We know that we aren’t obliged to show it according to law, but when you are surrounded by a bunch of people in black with machine guns or some other weapons… They started swearing, shouting: “Did you want changes? We will show you the changes now!” They started to discuss what to do with us and decided to take us to the police office. 

They took our car keys and took us to the police van, we didn’t see the face of the driver too. Two people with weapons sat down with us, and someone was driving in our car behind us. Then they remembered about me and told me to unlock my phone with the password. I said, “My hands are shaking.” One of them even said: “Leave her alone, why do you need this.” The second one – the most aggressive one – took my phone away from me and also started saying: “Here, there is a video from the protests …”

We were taken to the inner courtyard of the police office – there were already guys lying on the road from the car that had arrived before us, and the girl was standing near the wall. They put me not far from her, facing the wall too, and the guys were put to the other wall. And then I heard the blows and realized that they were beating my husband – because the one who was beating him said: “Why do you need a white bracelet?” It was a white rubber bracelet on my husband’s hand – a symbol of our support for Tsikhanouskaya and for peaceful changes. I wanted to have a look, but those who were behind me said: “Don’t shake your head.” 

They came to write down our personal data. An officer of the district office of internal affairs, I guess, came closer to me, without a mask and in civilian clothes – I couldn’t see his face either, because I was facing the wall. He told me to enter the password on the phone, but he said: “Mashenka, if you need anything, please let me know,” – such a super-kind policeman.

While I was unlocking the phone, I managed to remove the Telegram app and something else, because I heard them say that they would watch our subscriptions. He said: “I’ll see what you deleted now,” but he failed.

The guys and the girl from another car were taken away somewhere, and then they also started calling us by our last names. While I was walking, the one who looked like a riot police officer started screaming at me to lower my head. And the officer in civilian clothes said: “Don’t touch her, everything is okay.” And then such a story happened. We were already told to take our things back, they gave the phones back to us – but our friend’s wife was calling him all the time, and his ringtone was Tsoi’s song “Changes”. He was told to turn off the sound, and someone behind said: “Don’t let them go, they haven’t learned their lesson yet.” 

They took and put us facing another wall of the courtyard. Guys were put with their hands behind their head, I just kept my hands behind my back. My husband was hit on his legs and told to spread his legs wider because he chuckled. At first they told me that I could stand however I wanted, but then another riot police officer came up and told me to put my legs wider too. All the time they were giving different commands, and it was difficult to understand what they wanted. One of the riot police officers allowed the guy, whose legs went numb, to squat, and another one came closer to him, kicked him in the legs and ordered him to stand up against the wall again.

They were standing behind us and mocking, saying: “It would be better if you stayed at home.” Our friend’s hand went numb, he was forbidden to move it, but he was told: “Why are you hanging around the protests if you are so frail?” They said basically the same phrases that I had already heard from my acquaintances who were detained: “You are throwing Molotov cocktails at us”, “It’s the West that pays for all of it.”

In the end, we heard another guy was brought there too, and the rhythmic sounds of batons on the body – several people were beating him very severely. He was asking not to be beaten, but they were swearing and beating him. It was really scary. Then they took him away, and we were told that we would stand there until seven in the morning, the end of their shift. Then someone came to us and asked: “Who is the most violent one here? Not a girl.” His colleagues started laughing and pointed at our friend. And they forced him to do push-ups under the count, they told him to freeze in the most uncomfortable position, and promised that if he didn’t push up normally, they would beat him – all with mockery and abusive words. Then they told him to squat.

After that we were told that we would be released without a protocol: “We hope you will not participate in anything else.” We came back home at around 2 am. The guys have big bruises from batons. But we are not going to stop, because it was their main goal – to intimidate us, but they themselves are afraid of us and take us as enemies.

Nikita Telizhenko, Znak.com journalist, 29 y.o.

I was on my way to the store, I needed some new clothes, because after the protests mine were a bit worn-out. I got everything. As I was approaching the Sports Palace street, I saw a bus, all young people getting off were being detained and taken to a police truck right from the bus station. I started writing everything down for our editorial office. As I was doing it, a bus stopped next to me, some people ran out of it and grabbed me by the arms.

They took away my phone. They decided that since I am writing something and I have internet, I must be a protest coordinator. They saw the pictures of armored cars and the protests in my phone. They put me in a car and took me to a police truck, inside of which I spent the next two hours. I tried to explain to them that I am a journalist, but they weren’t too charmed by my introduction.

Real horrors started happening next to the Moscow district police department, where we were taken. They open the doors of police trucks and twist people’s arms behind their backs. If your head is higher than they want it, they immediately hit you on the back of your head either with a baton or a shield. They drag you across the floor. I saw a guy who was walking in front of me and whose head they hit on the doorway. He screamed, raised his head and received another blow. 

“Don’t touch journalists.” What The Ministry of Internal Affairs says about abuse of journalists. 

What happened next shocked me the most – “a human carpet.” They led us into the building and the first thing I saw there were people just lying on the floor. And both the riot police and you are walking on them. I had to step on a man, because when I tried to walk around him, they hit me again.

There is blood, feces on the floor. They throw you onto the floor, you are not allowed to turn your head. I was lucky I was wearing a mask. There was a guy next to me who tried to turn, he received a very strong blow with army boots on his head, although he was already beaten up a lot at that point. There were people whose hands and arms were so beaten they couldn’t move them. 

People were forced to pray. They brought in a guy who was pleading “Please, don’t hit me.” He was told that he’ll be dealt with and that his teeth will be knocked out. He was choking on his own blood and a policeman told him: “Cite “Our Father”!” And there you are, sitting there listening to a young man spitting blood citing “Our Father, who art in heaven…”

The scariest moment is when you are sitting there and meanwhile people in the corridor or a floor down are being beaten up so bad that they can’t speak, and only wail. You turn your head – and there’s blood on the floor, people are screaming, and there is a board of honor hanging on the wall, full of pictures of smiling policemen who are doing all this stuff. And you realize that you are in hell.

After a shift change we learnt that two of the detained have disappeared. They understood that they were starting to confuse people, and we were taken to lower floors to single cells – 20-30 people in each. There was no ventilation, you could only stand next to the wall. In an hour humidity turned everything wet. The elderly felt sick, one man fainted.

Around 16 hours after we were brought to the police department we were harshly led out of the building and thrown into a police truck. We were not allowed to sit, people were put on top of each other, in three layers. Some injured people were underneath everyone, they didn’t have enough air to breathe. They were screaming in pain, and the police just approached them and hit them on the head with batons, humiliating them. All of this resembled Gestapo-type torturing, it’s unimaginable in a day-to-day life that something like this is possible.

We weren’t allowed to go to the bathroom. Those who asked to go were told to do it right in their pants, including defecating. At that point everyone already stopped trying to ask for anything – they understood they won’t get any help back in the police department. Those who complained were violently beaten up. 

People were allowed to move around when the police truck started moving. But if anyone tried to lean on the seats or raise their heads, they were punished. Then the police got bored and ordered us to kneel and sing the Belarusian anthem. They were recording us with their phones. The cars the police truck passed were honking. If the drivers had only known what was going on inside – they wouldn’t have been honking, they would have stormed all of these police trucks. 

I lost my patience after an hour and a half. I told them: “Excuse me, I am a Russian journalist, what have I done wrong?” They started hitting me on the back, on the neck and the head, I didn’t receive any answer. There was a guy next to me saying: “Please, just shoot us, why make us suffer all this?” They answered that no one is going to shoot us, because more pain is waiting for us in prison and that there we’ll be beaten one after another.

When we arrived at the Zhodzina detention center, we were told: “Say goodbye to your lives, they’ll be killing you here.” But to our surprise, we were accepted there quite well. The staff of the detention center were abusing us only up until the moment police left. People were happy to be in prison – their biggest fear was to be taken back to Minsk in police trucks. 

I was there for three or four hours. The colonel came to get me, they took me and we went to look for my things. Those who were there with me were happy that I was being released and that I could tell everyone about what is happening inside. At the exit we were met by a representative of the Russian Consulate. I was deported from Belarus, prohibited from entering the country for 5 years and taken to Smolensk. 

If I was allowed to, I would come back to Belarus to work. Amazing people live there. They look at the changes from a positive point of view and are united by a common goal. 

Natalia, 34 y.o.

I was just walking on the street with my friends. A crowd of people running from the OMON riot police appeared behind us, then the riot police themselves. Some of the policemen ran past us, but one of them, probably because he was too tired to run, stopped next to my friend and I. He was saying: “Why are you laughing? I can see you’re amused. Are you amused by the fact that a policeman was cut with a broken bottle today too?” But I wasn’t laughing, I just wanted him to leave us in peace.

But this made him angry for some reason, and he started dragging me into a van. There were already some people inside. We were asked: “Don’t you just love feeling like cannon fodder? Where is your Tsikhanounsaya? Where is your Tsapkala?”

We arrived at the Soviet district police department. We were made to stand facing the wall, our hands on it. We were standing there until the next morning. They moved us around every now and then. They took us to a cellar, where they took away our phones, and then they sent us back to that wall. 

There was someone [on the other side of the wall] who came by car and tried to play a song by Viktor Tsoi – “Changes”. And we could hear the policemen saying to each other how they should drag them in here too, along with their “changes”. There was a girl looking for her boyfriend. I think she climbed on the roof of the car, because we could see her face behind the fence. And the policemen were talking among themselves: “Look, there’s some cow standing there, go get her down from there!” 

Men were beaten. One of them had a broken rib, as far as I know. There was a girl, her foot was injured – it probably happened when they were detaining her. The boldest ones of us were the first ones to be punished. The police trucks pulled up, and they started putting the men inside. It was obvious that someone was beaten inside. I think only a few people were taken inside at a time, and I could hear: “Feet under! Feet under!”, I could hear the sound of blows and screams. Once full, police trucks would drive them away.

Girls stayed. Policemen started calling us into the building and offering us to sign police protocols. What was written in them was complete nonsense – that I actively participated in the protest and yelled “Stop, cockroach!” slogans. I decided that I wasn’t going to sign it. Those who did were released immediately. Those who didn’t were taken to the Akrescina detention center. 

Actually, not all of the staff there are horrible. We were lucky to interact with a good policeman, who said: “Okay, send an SMS home while no one can see you”. I don’t know if it’s just a role that he’s playing or he really is good, but I’d like to think that there is actually something humane in these people.

Because there were so many detained people there, everything was very chaotic. We were supposed to be taken to the detention center, but it turned out that it was full, so they decided to take us to a temporary containment cell. But there was no place there either, so they decided to put us in a so-called “glass” – a tiny room the size of 1×1 meters, there were four of us inside.

Then we were placed in a double prison cell. We were given another mattress. Except for the beds occupied by two other women, there was a table, a bench and the floor. Everyone slept where they could: someone – on the table, or you could say on a bookshelf, someone – on the mattress placed across the room. We didn’t eat for around 24 hours, but then they started giving us food.

As our third day there was coming to an end and we told them that they should let us go, they replied: “No one owes you anything here”. They talk to you as if you were an animal. Can you even talk to animals like that? They are like a completely different type of people, talking to us like we are criminals, and speaking among themselves in the same way.

After 74 hours, on the night of 12-13 August, they told us to leave our cell, led us outside the building and made us stand facing the wall. They told us they wouldn’t return our things to us – in my case it was my phone, my passport, my driver’s licence and the keys to the apartment. For some people the keys that were taken were the only ones to their apartments. Two girls kept complaining, so they were hit and told that they would be returned to the cell.

I turned to them and asked: “What are you doing?”, for which I received a slap on the face and a baton blow at my legs. The angry policeman asked: “Who else would like their things back?”, and then he told us to run. Everyone was wearing shoes with no shoelaces, but we had to run to the exit. We were told: “There’s a police cordon at the perimeter, if you run into it – you’ll have to come back”.