Miron Vitushka, 16, arrested by police in Belarus with his parents.
KYIV – This week, detainees in Belarus say they were physically and psychologically tortured through unwavering police forces in the face of their arrest.
More than 6,000 more people have been arrested in protests in Belarus since the presidential election was widely ruled out as fraudulent last Sunday. On Thursday, many of them left detention centres and brought with them horrific accounts of their experiences.
In interviews with independent Belarusian media and BuzzFeed News, many detainees remembered that they were denied food and water and forced to endure stressful conditions with their hands tied behind their backs for several hours. They said the police had locked up 60 other people in criminal cells for 10 other people or less. Some said police put guns on their heads and threatened to blow them up with grenades, the independent Belarusian online news page Tut.through reported. And they recounted walking on the mendacity of inmates crying upside down on the blood-soaked floors, and hearing the tinglings in the spines of others being kicked, beaten, twisted and run over by the police with batons.
Audio recorded through Nasha Niva, an independent news organization, and shared through Belarusian journalist Franak Viacorka captured those disturbing sounds from outside a detention center.
After being released, some of the detainees lifted their shirts or raised their pants to show the half-bruises of the length of a melon on their bodies. In a photograph published through BuzzFeed News, a guy had the fingerprints of a police baton on his cross-shaped back. It is not known if it was intentional, but some said there was a perverse devout detail concerned about what Guy said torture: the police had forced Guyy to recite the “Our Father” prayer, to ask God for forgiveness for participating in the protests. , and promised never to do it again, OUTLET reported.
Miron Vitushka, a 16-year-old student from Minsk who studies history and plays in a psychedelic rock band, said he was arrested Monday night while crossing the street with his mother and friends in the Belarusian capital. Talking to BuzzFeed News on the phone, he said he didn’t even protest at the time.
Vitushka said police officers in unidentified vans jumped, beat him, handcuffed him and threw him into the van before running away. He said he forced it face down on the floor of the vehicle. While police cornered others, they were thrown over Vitushka.
Vitushka said he was transferred to a police station and then to a school gymnasium, where about a hundred men were tied up, their hands on their backs and their faces on the floor. Officials beat the men, who shouted and begged for the end of the abuse, he said.
“The police said that if they were ordered to kill us, they would kill us all if we hesitated,” Vitushka told BuzzFeed News. “They were screaming, “Oh, yes, do you want your democracy now?”
Arrested in the latest protests show their beating lines as they leave Criminal Okrestina early in the morning in Minsk on 14 August.
“They were trying to scare other people from participating in any demonstrations,” he added.
Vitushka said his parents, however, understood where he was being held and arrived at the makeshift detention center to demand his release, along with dozens of people who asked for the same for their family circle. But instead of releasing the detainees, police beat and arrested the group, adding their parents. And so, the circle of relatives of 3 endured what Vitushka described as “3 days of hell”.
Vitushka was released on Tuesday, her mother was released on Wednesday and her father was released on Thursday. The circle of relatives is meeting lately with lawyers to discuss the option of taking legal action contrary to the state.
Several other Belarusians described equally horrific reports of the detention. A young woman who was arrested in a non-violent protest on Wednesday and was released on Thursday from the infamous Okrestina detention centre on the outskirts of Minsk told the news page Tut.by online about her ordeal amid tears.
In one video, she said 10 cops beat her with batons and fists, forced her to oppose a wall, pulled down her pants and threatened to rape her in an organization and kill her.
“They said, “We’re going to fuck you so hard that your own mother may not recognize you,” recalls a police officer who told her.
At least one man has died in custody, the Belarusian government announced Wednesday.
On Thursday, the country’s interior minister, Yuri Karayev, said he had taken over “random people” who had been caught up in the protests and were injured. But he did not regret the alleged abuse of the police.
Contacted by telephone, an interior ministry official declined to comment on the abuses reported through the police.
Vitushka called him a hollow apology and said Karayev only seeks to quell the large-scale protests that engulfed the country and threatened Lukashenko’s 26-year reign.
The protests erupted after Sunday’s election, which resulted in a sixth election victory for the 65-year-old holder, despite widespread reports of vote manipulation. Her opponent, former English instructor Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, 37, declared victory for herself, reporting dozens of constituencies showing she had won between 60% and 70% of the votes each.
Pressured by Lukashenko’s government and for fear of arrest, she fled to Lithuania on Tuesday. Her husband, a popular political vlogger who was allowed to run for public office, has been in state custody since May.
On Friday, Tikhanovskaya released a video saying that Belarusians were no longer looking to live under Lukashenko’s regime. “Most don’t do it in their victory,” he said.
He also called on the government to avoid the “bloody massacre” of protesters and to settle for dialogue.
“I call on mayors of all cities to hold mass nonviolent demonstrations in the city on August 15 and 16,” he added.
Subsequently, in a statement, he called for “the creation of a coordinating council to ensure the movement of power” in the country.
Meanwhile, staff from public and personal companies in Belarus left their jobs for a moment a day to protest police violence and call for the release of all detainees. They also asked Lukashenko to resign, with a sign in a factory that read, “We chose him.”
Lukashenko has said little since the election and the outburst of protests against him and his regime. But on Friday, in comments spread through state media in an assembly to talk about the economy, it proved provocative. He suggested that he was in no condition to resign and said, “I’m still alive and not abroad.”
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