Freed from Belarus jails, protesters recount beatings
MINSK, Belarus — They emerged dazed, shaken and in tears from the detention centre in Minsk, to be met by waiting relatives. They displayed the black-andblue bruises on their bodies, saying police had beaten them mercilessly. One teenager asked his weeping mother to look away.
Authorities in Belarus have freed at least 2,000 of about 7,000 people who had been pulled off the streets by riot police in the days following a disputed election that kept the country’s iron-fisted leader, President Alexander Lukashenko, in power.
As they reunited with loved ones early Friday, they told of being struck repeatedly with truncheons, being threatened with gang rape and held amid harsh conditions and overcrowded cells. The accounts are fueling outrage at home and have European countries weighing new sanctions against officials in Belarus.
“They were beating me without mercy,” Alexei Shchitnikov told The Associated Press upon his release, his face disfigured by bruises.
The 47-year-old company director displayed a cross drawn on his back, an apparent marking by police that he should be given rough treatment.
“They were behaving like bandits and real beasts,” he added. “The people will remember Lukashenko’s ‘victory’ for a long time.”
Student Sasha Vilks showed a reporter his legs and his back deeply bruised from truncheon blows, but told his weeping mother not to look.
“They called us terrorists and beat us severely on our legs and our backs,” the 19-year-old told the AP. “They would beat us first and then ask questions.”
He said he was kept lying face down for hours in handcuffs and didn’t see the faces of his tormentors, who wore balaclavas.
“Some of them were walking around, saying ‘Give me someone to beat.’ It was really scary,” he said, breaking into tears.
Tatyana, a 21-year-old bookseller who didn’t give her last name because she feared police reprisals, said she was threatened with gang rape. “It was a real hell,” she said. “When I was on a police bus, they threatened to rape me with a truncheon. The more I cried, the more they beat me. They kept repeating, ‘You love the president!’”
Shuddering, she added: “They were indiscriminately beating everyone there, men and women. On the police bus, I saw them break one man’s rib and he was crying in pain.”
The demonstrations began after officials announced that Lukashenko, who has been in power for 26 years, had won 80% of the vote in Sunday’s election — a result that protesters denounced as rigged. During the four nights that followed, blackclad riot police detained thousands of largely peaceful demonstrators in Minsk and other cities after firing tear gas, rubber bullets and stun grenades. At least one person was killed.
The graphic descriptions of savage beatings and other abuse by police has brought tens of thousands into the streets of the Belarusian capital in the biggest challenge in his tenure.
Yegor Martinovich, an awardwinning journalist and the editor of the popular Nasha Niva independent online newspaper, was among those detained in the crackdown and said he was beaten ferociously while in custody.