Belarus Is Detaining Thousands Of Peaceful Protesters. Many Are Telling Gruesome Stories Of Physical And Psychological Abuse By Police.
“They said if they were given an order to kill us, they would kill us all without any hesitation,” 16-year-old Miron Vitushka, who was detained by police, told BuzzFeed News.
Christopher Miller BuzzFeed News Contributor
Reporting From
Kyiv, Ukraine
Last updated on August 15, 2020,
Courtesy Miron Vitushka
Miron Vitushka, 16, was detained by police in Belarus along with both of his parents.
KYIV — People detained across Belarus this week say they were tortured physically and psychologically by the police forces loyal to the authoritarian regime of Alexander Lukashenko while in custody.
More than 6,000 people have been detained during protests that have rocked Belarus since the presidential election widely rejected as fraudulent last Sunday. On Thursday, many of them came staggering out of detention centers, and they brought with them horrific accounts of their experiences.
In interviews with independent Belarusian media and BuzzFeed News, many of those detained recalled being refused water and food and forced to endure stress positions with their hands tied behind their backs for several hours. They said police had locked them up with as many as 60 people in jail cells meant for 10 people or less. Some said police put guns to their heads and threatened to blow them up with grenades, the independent Belarusian news site Tut.by reported. And they described walking over weeping detainees lying facedown on floors soaked with blood, and hearing the spine-tingling howls of others being kicked, punched, twisted, and clobbered by police with batons.
Audio recorded by Nasha Niva, an independent news outlet, and shared by Belarusian journalist Franak Viacorka captured those disturbing sounds from outside one detention center.
Franak Viačorka@franakviacorka
[SOUND ON] "It feels like we live in Middle Ages." Here is audio recorded last night near the Minsk detention center where hundreds/thousands are being kept, indoor and outdoor. You can hear screams and moans from beatings.08:31 PM - 13 Aug 2020
Reply Retweet Favorite
Upon being freed, some of those who were detained lifted up their shirts or rolled their pant legs up to show media what were melon-sized bruises on their bodies. In a photograph seen by BuzzFeed News, one man had the imprints of a police truncheon on his back in the shape of a cross. It was unclear whether that was intentional, but some said there had been a perverse religious element involved in what many said was torture: Police had forced many to recite the “Our Father” prayer, beg God for forgiveness for participating in the protests, and vow never to do so again, Russian News outlet Znak reported.
Miron Vitushka, a 16-year-old Minsk student who studies history and plays in a psychedelic rock band, described being detained on Monday evening while he was crossing the street with his mother and some friends in the Belarusian capital. Speaking to BuzzFeed News by phone, he said he was not even protesting at the time.
Vitushka said police officers in unmarked vans jumped out, beat him, handcuffed him, and threw him into the van before speeding off. He said he was forced facedown onto the floor of the vehicle. As police rounded up others, they threw them on top of Vitushka.
Vitushka said he was moved to a police station and later a school gymnasium, where about 100 men were kept tied with their hands behind their backs and faces flat on the floor. Officers beat the men, who howled and pleaded for the abuse to stop, he said.
“The police said if they were given an order to kill us, they would kill us all without any hesitation,” Vitushka told BuzzFeed News. “They were shouting, ‘Oh yeah, do you need your democracy now?’”
Sergei Gapon / Getty Images
People detained during recent protests show their traces of beatings as they leave the Okrestina prison early morning in Minsk, Aug. 14.
“They were trying to scare people so they wouldn’t take part in any protests,” he added.
Vitushka said his parents eventually figured out where he was being held and came to the makeshift detention center to demand his release, along with dozens of others asking the same for their family members. But instead of freeing those detained, police beat and arrested the group, including his parents. And so the family of three endured what Vitushka described as “three days of hell.”
Vitushka was released on Tuesday, his mother was released on Wednesday, and his father was released on Thursday. The family is currently meeting with lawyers to discuss the possibility of bringing a suit against the state.
Several other Belarusians described similarly horrendous experiences in detention. One young woman who was detained while peacefully demonstrating on Wednesday and was released Thursday from the notorious Okrestina detention center on the outskirts of Minsk recounted her ordeal through tears to the Tut.by news site.
In a video, she said 10 riot police officers pummeled her with batons and their fists, forced her against a wall, pulled down her pants, and threatened to gang rape and kill her.
“They told me, ‘We’ll fuck you so hard, your own mother won’t recognize you,’” she recalled a police officer telling her.
TUT.BY@tutby
Девушка, которую выпустили из изолятора на Окрестина, рассказывает, как с ней обращались силовики. «Били, оскорбляли, угрожали смертью, снимали штаны».08:45 PM - 13 Aug 2020
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At least one man has died in custody, Belarusian authorities said on Wednesday.
On Thursday, the country’s interior minister, Yuri Karayev, said he took responsibility for “random people” getting caught up in the protests and injured. But he expressed no regret for the alleged police abuse.
Reached by phone, an Interior Ministry official declined to comment on the reported abuses by police.
Vitushka called it an empty apology and claimed Karayev was merely trying to quell the large-scale demonstrations that have engulfed the country and threatened the 26-year rule of Lukashenko.
The demonstrations erupted following Sunday’s election, which culminated in the 65-year-old incumbent president claiming a sixth election victory despite widespread reports of vote-rigging. His challenger, 37-year-old former English teacher Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, declared victory for herself, citing reports from dozens of precincts that showed she had won somewhere between 60% and 70% of votes at each.
Under pressure from Lukashenko’s government and fearful of arrest, she fled to Lithuania on Tuesday. Her husband, a popular political vlogger who was barred from running in the election, has been in state custody since May.
On Friday, Tikhanovskaya published a video in which she said Belarusians no longer want to live under the Lukashenko regime. “The majority do not believe in his victory,” she said.
She also called on authorities to stop the “bloody slaughter” of protesters and agree to a dialogue.
“I ask the mayors of all cities to organize peaceful mass assemblies in every city on Aug. 15 and 16,” she added.
Later in another statement, she called for the “creation of a coordinating council to ensure the transfer of power” in the country.
Meanwhile, workers at state and private enterprises across Belarus walked off the job for a second straight day to protest police violence and demand the release of all those detained. They also called for Lukashenko to leave office, with a sign at one factory saying “we didn’t elect him.”
Lukashenko has said little since the election and the outbreak of protests against him and his regime. But on Friday, in comments carried by state media during a meeting to discuss the economy, he appeared defiant. Suggesting he was not ready to step down, he said, “I am still alive and not abroad.”
Belarusians Are Walking Out Of Work And Accusing Police Of Torture As Protests Grip The Country
The first cracks began to show in the authoritarian regime of President Alexander Lukashenko as a senior official and police officers resigned in protest over violence against demonstrators.
“They said if they were given an order to kill us, they would kill us all without any hesitation,” 16-year-old Miron Vitushka, who was detained by police, told BuzzFeed News.
Christopher Miller BuzzFeed News Contributor
Reporting From
Kyiv, Ukraine
Last updated on August 15, 2020,
Courtesy Miron Vitushka
Miron Vitushka, 16, was detained by police in Belarus along with both of his parents.
KYIV — People detained across Belarus this week say they were tortured physically and psychologically by the police forces loyal to the authoritarian regime of Alexander Lukashenko while in custody.
More than 6,000 people have been detained during protests that have rocked Belarus since the presidential election widely rejected as fraudulent last Sunday. On Thursday, many of them came staggering out of detention centers, and they brought with them horrific accounts of their experiences.
In interviews with independent Belarusian media and BuzzFeed News, many of those detained recalled being refused water and food and forced to endure stress positions with their hands tied behind their backs for several hours. They said police had locked them up with as many as 60 people in jail cells meant for 10 people or less. Some said police put guns to their heads and threatened to blow them up with grenades, the independent Belarusian news site Tut.by reported. And they described walking over weeping detainees lying facedown on floors soaked with blood, and hearing the spine-tingling howls of others being kicked, punched, twisted, and clobbered by police with batons.
Audio recorded by Nasha Niva, an independent news outlet, and shared by Belarusian journalist Franak Viacorka captured those disturbing sounds from outside one detention center.
Franak Viačorka@franakviacorka
[SOUND ON] "It feels like we live in Middle Ages." Here is audio recorded last night near the Minsk detention center where hundreds/thousands are being kept, indoor and outdoor. You can hear screams and moans from beatings.08:31 PM - 13 Aug 2020
Reply Retweet Favorite
Upon being freed, some of those who were detained lifted up their shirts or rolled their pant legs up to show media what were melon-sized bruises on their bodies. In a photograph seen by BuzzFeed News, one man had the imprints of a police truncheon on his back in the shape of a cross. It was unclear whether that was intentional, but some said there had been a perverse religious element involved in what many said was torture: Police had forced many to recite the “Our Father” prayer, beg God for forgiveness for participating in the protests, and vow never to do so again, Russian News outlet Znak reported.
Miron Vitushka, a 16-year-old Minsk student who studies history and plays in a psychedelic rock band, described being detained on Monday evening while he was crossing the street with his mother and some friends in the Belarusian capital. Speaking to BuzzFeed News by phone, he said he was not even protesting at the time.
Vitushka said police officers in unmarked vans jumped out, beat him, handcuffed him, and threw him into the van before speeding off. He said he was forced facedown onto the floor of the vehicle. As police rounded up others, they threw them on top of Vitushka.
Vitushka said he was moved to a police station and later a school gymnasium, where about 100 men were kept tied with their hands behind their backs and faces flat on the floor. Officers beat the men, who howled and pleaded for the abuse to stop, he said.
“The police said if they were given an order to kill us, they would kill us all without any hesitation,” Vitushka told BuzzFeed News. “They were shouting, ‘Oh yeah, do you need your democracy now?’”
Sergei Gapon / Getty Images
People detained during recent protests show their traces of beatings as they leave the Okrestina prison early morning in Minsk, Aug. 14.
“They were trying to scare people so they wouldn’t take part in any protests,” he added.
Vitushka said his parents eventually figured out where he was being held and came to the makeshift detention center to demand his release, along with dozens of others asking the same for their family members. But instead of freeing those detained, police beat and arrested the group, including his parents. And so the family of three endured what Vitushka described as “three days of hell.”
Vitushka was released on Tuesday, his mother was released on Wednesday, and his father was released on Thursday. The family is currently meeting with lawyers to discuss the possibility of bringing a suit against the state.
Several other Belarusians described similarly horrendous experiences in detention. One young woman who was detained while peacefully demonstrating on Wednesday and was released Thursday from the notorious Okrestina detention center on the outskirts of Minsk recounted her ordeal through tears to the Tut.by news site.
In a video, she said 10 riot police officers pummeled her with batons and their fists, forced her against a wall, pulled down her pants, and threatened to gang rape and kill her.
“They told me, ‘We’ll fuck you so hard, your own mother won’t recognize you,’” she recalled a police officer telling her.
TUT.BY@tutby
Девушка, которую выпустили из изолятора на Окрестина, рассказывает, как с ней обращались силовики. «Били, оскорбляли, угрожали смертью, снимали штаны».08:45 PM - 13 Aug 2020
Reply Retweet Favorite
At least one man has died in custody, Belarusian authorities said on Wednesday.
On Thursday, the country’s interior minister, Yuri Karayev, said he took responsibility for “random people” getting caught up in the protests and injured. But he expressed no regret for the alleged police abuse.
Reached by phone, an Interior Ministry official declined to comment on the reported abuses by police.
Vitushka called it an empty apology and claimed Karayev was merely trying to quell the large-scale demonstrations that have engulfed the country and threatened the 26-year rule of Lukashenko.
The demonstrations erupted following Sunday’s election, which culminated in the 65-year-old incumbent president claiming a sixth election victory despite widespread reports of vote-rigging. His challenger, 37-year-old former English teacher Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, declared victory for herself, citing reports from dozens of precincts that showed she had won somewhere between 60% and 70% of votes at each.
Under pressure from Lukashenko’s government and fearful of arrest, she fled to Lithuania on Tuesday. Her husband, a popular political vlogger who was barred from running in the election, has been in state custody since May.
On Friday, Tikhanovskaya published a video in which she said Belarusians no longer want to live under the Lukashenko regime. “The majority do not believe in his victory,” she said.
She also called on authorities to stop the “bloody slaughter” of protesters and agree to a dialogue.
“I ask the mayors of all cities to organize peaceful mass assemblies in every city on Aug. 15 and 16,” she added.
Later in another statement, she called for the “creation of a coordinating council to ensure the transfer of power” in the country.
Meanwhile, workers at state and private enterprises across Belarus walked off the job for a second straight day to protest police violence and demand the release of all those detained. They also called for Lukashenko to leave office, with a sign at one factory saying “we didn’t elect him.”
Lukashenko has said little since the election and the outbreak of protests against him and his regime. But on Friday, in comments carried by state media during a meeting to discuss the economy, he appeared defiant. Suggesting he was not ready to step down, he said, “I am still alive and not abroad.”
Belarusians Are Walking Out Of Work And Accusing Police Of Torture As Protests Grip The Country
The first cracks began to show in the authoritarian regime of President Alexander Lukashenko as a senior official and police officers resigned in protest over violence against demonstrators.
Christopher MillerBuzzFeed News Contributor
Kyiv, Ukraine
Posted on August 13, 2020, at 1:45 p.m. ET
Vasily Fedosenko / Reuters
Women take part in a demonstration against police violence following the presidential election in Minsk, Belarus, Aug. 12.
KYIV — Thousands of workers at state enterprises across Belarus staged walkouts and women dressed in white and carrying flowers formed human chains in the capital, Minsk, on Thursday to protest the brutal crackdown on demonstrators that have gripped the country since Sunday’s disputed presidential election.
The public displays of defiance are unlike anything the country has seen since it broke from the Soviet Union in 1991, and they have significantly upped the pressure on 65-year-old Alexander Lukashenko, the authoritarian president who has ruled Belarus with an iron fist since 1994.
The unrest erupted after Lukashenko claimed to have secured a landslide reelection victory this weekend despite widespread reports of vote-rigging. The Belarusian opposition camp has called the vote fraudulent, while the US and the EU have condemned the election as neither free nor fair.
Lukashenko said he defeated Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, a 37-year-old former English teacher who exploded onto the political scene to challenge him in the election after her husband, a popular vlogger, was barred from running and jailed. Tikhanovskaya ignited a movement in Belarus, where she drew massive crowds inspired by her candidacy. After the election, she fled to Lithuania under tense circumstances and following a mysterious meeting with election officials on Tuesday.
On Wednesday, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty on a visit to Prague that Washington, DC, wants “good outcomes for the Belarusian people.” He also said the US has observed “the violence and the aftermath, peaceful protesters being treated in ways that are inconsistent with how they should be treated.”
Reuters cited EU diplomats and officials as saying they will likely impose new sanctions on Belarus before the end of August.
Videos and photos shared on social media on Thursday showed laborers at an auto parts plant, a truck factory, an aircraft accessories shop, and several other state-run enterprises walking off the job. They told their bosses they would not go back to work until heavily armed riot police stopped beating up demonstrators and authorities released the thousands of people being held in detention centers, according to accounts in local media.
In one video, a supervisor at a plant in the western city of Grodno is heard asking workers to raise their hands if they voted for Tikhanovskaya. Nearly everyone in the large crowd erupts in approval and raises their hand.
Christopher Miller@ChristopherJM
“Show us by hands those who voted for Lukashenko. Now show us who voted for Tikhanovskaya.” Another factory strike.02:13 PM - 13 Aug 2020
Reply Retweet Favorite
It wasn’t only blue-collar workers who joined the nationwide strike. Artists from the Belarusian State Philharmonic Society also walked out in protest over police violence and the election results. Holding placards that spelled out “My voice was stolen,” the group performed a stirring rendition of “Mighty God,” a hymn that was once proposed to be the official anthem of Belarus.
Медиазона. Беларусь@mediazona_by
Сотрудники Белгосфилармонии вышли на забастовку: они выстроились у здания с плакатами «У меня украли голос» и поют https://t.co/fefxUgMphB Видео: Сергей Козлович09:24 AM - 13 Aug 2020
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The demonstrations of defiance came as the first cracks began to show in the regime of Lukashenko, famously dubbed by the West as “Europe’s last dictator.” In an unprecedented move, a deputy head of his administration reportedly resigned in protest over police violence against demonstrators, and several officers and military personnel shared photos and videos on social media showing them throwing out or destroying their uniforms and credentials.
One former officer wrote on Instagram beneath a photo of his police badge and awards, “17 years of service over. My conscience is clear. Police with the people.” At the time of publishing, it had more than 380,000 likes.
The defections have also spread to Belarus’s powerful state-run media machine, with several popular talk show hosts and news presenters announcing their departures over the government-ordered abuse of protesters.
“As a wife, mother, media employee, and citizen, I cannot calmly look at what is happening in the country now,” Marina Mishkina, a state-run radio station reporter, told Radio Free Europe’s Belarusian service. “I’m afraid of everything now. I walk down the street and I’m afraid. I open social networks and I’m afraid [of what I’ll see].”
Riot police officers numbering in the thousands have been deployed across the country, transforming public streets and squares where families once strolled into bloody battlegrounds. The largest concentration of them is in Minsk, where the protests are now in their fifth day, and the clashes on the streets the most violent.
Vasily Fedosenko / Reuters
A woman gestures during a rally following the presidential election in Minsk, Belarus, Aug. 10.
Police forces have used stun grenades, tear gas, rubber bullets, and as of Wednesday even live ammunition to suppress crowds of protesters. They have confiscated ambulances and used them to disguise their approach while hunting people down in the streets. And they have targeted journalists covering the events, beating them and destroying their equipment.
At least 68 journalists, including foreign journalists, have been detained, and 23 of those remain in detention facilities, the Russian MediaZona news site reported.
Minsk-based journalist Hanna Liubakova, citing her own sources, reported on Thursday that police had begun searching hotels for foreign correspondents. On Tuesday, the head of the immigration department in Belarus’s Foreign Ministry warned that reporters working without government accreditation would be arrested, deported, and banned from entering the country for 10 years.
The ministry refused to grant press accreditation to dozens of media outlets, including BuzzFeed News, that applied in the run-up to the election.
Meanwhile, authorities released dozens of the more than 6,000 demonstrators who have been arrested during the protests. They staggered out of detention facilities across Belarus and were met by anxious family and friends. Some of them recounted their horrific experiences while in detention.
Videos have surfaced in recent days of police abuse against demonstrators. In one widely shared video, dozens of them are seen being beaten by police with batons as they lay facedown in a compound surrounded by high walls and razor wire. In another, filmed from outside detention facilities, demonstrators can be heard screaming and pleading with police not to beat them. In a video aired on state television, a disguised voice off camera tells a group of young protesters, their faces badly bruised and hands tied behind their backs, to apologize and vow not to participate in more demonstrations.
Russian journalist Nikita Telizhenko, who was detained by police and held in a jail cell for 16 hours before being released, described enduring and witnessing vicious beatings as well as the horrific conditions in which people are kept.
At the police station, he said, “The guy in front of me, they purposely hit his head on the doorframe of the entrance to the police department. He screamed in pain. In response, they began to beat him on the head and shout: ‘Shut up, bitch!’”
He continued, “The first time they hit me, it was when they took me out of the police van. I didn’t bend down low enough and got hit with a hand to the head, and then with a knee in the face.”
Telizhenko described the room where protesters were being held as covered with “a living carpet” of people he had to walk on top of. Then he said police ordered him to lie facedown. “And there was nowhere to lie. People are lying around in pools of blood.”
August 13, 2020, at 12:01 p.m.
Correction: Alexander Lukashenko has served as president of Belarus since 1994. The year was misstated in an earlier version of this post.
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Christopher Miller is a Kyiv-based American journalist and editor.
Kyiv, Ukraine
Posted on August 13, 2020, at 1:45 p.m. ET
Vasily Fedosenko / Reuters
Women take part in a demonstration against police violence following the presidential election in Minsk, Belarus, Aug. 12.
KYIV — Thousands of workers at state enterprises across Belarus staged walkouts and women dressed in white and carrying flowers formed human chains in the capital, Minsk, on Thursday to protest the brutal crackdown on demonstrators that have gripped the country since Sunday’s disputed presidential election.
The public displays of defiance are unlike anything the country has seen since it broke from the Soviet Union in 1991, and they have significantly upped the pressure on 65-year-old Alexander Lukashenko, the authoritarian president who has ruled Belarus with an iron fist since 1994.
The unrest erupted after Lukashenko claimed to have secured a landslide reelection victory this weekend despite widespread reports of vote-rigging. The Belarusian opposition camp has called the vote fraudulent, while the US and the EU have condemned the election as neither free nor fair.
Lukashenko said he defeated Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, a 37-year-old former English teacher who exploded onto the political scene to challenge him in the election after her husband, a popular vlogger, was barred from running and jailed. Tikhanovskaya ignited a movement in Belarus, where she drew massive crowds inspired by her candidacy. After the election, she fled to Lithuania under tense circumstances and following a mysterious meeting with election officials on Tuesday.
On Wednesday, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty on a visit to Prague that Washington, DC, wants “good outcomes for the Belarusian people.” He also said the US has observed “the violence and the aftermath, peaceful protesters being treated in ways that are inconsistent with how they should be treated.”
Reuters cited EU diplomats and officials as saying they will likely impose new sanctions on Belarus before the end of August.
Videos and photos shared on social media on Thursday showed laborers at an auto parts plant, a truck factory, an aircraft accessories shop, and several other state-run enterprises walking off the job. They told their bosses they would not go back to work until heavily armed riot police stopped beating up demonstrators and authorities released the thousands of people being held in detention centers, according to accounts in local media.
In one video, a supervisor at a plant in the western city of Grodno is heard asking workers to raise their hands if they voted for Tikhanovskaya. Nearly everyone in the large crowd erupts in approval and raises their hand.
Christopher Miller@ChristopherJM
“Show us by hands those who voted for Lukashenko. Now show us who voted for Tikhanovskaya.” Another factory strike.02:13 PM - 13 Aug 2020
Reply Retweet Favorite
It wasn’t only blue-collar workers who joined the nationwide strike. Artists from the Belarusian State Philharmonic Society also walked out in protest over police violence and the election results. Holding placards that spelled out “My voice was stolen,” the group performed a stirring rendition of “Mighty God,” a hymn that was once proposed to be the official anthem of Belarus.
Медиазона. Беларусь@mediazona_by
Сотрудники Белгосфилармонии вышли на забастовку: они выстроились у здания с плакатами «У меня украли голос» и поют https://t.co/fefxUgMphB Видео: Сергей Козлович09:24 AM - 13 Aug 2020
Reply Retweet Favorite
The demonstrations of defiance came as the first cracks began to show in the regime of Lukashenko, famously dubbed by the West as “Europe’s last dictator.” In an unprecedented move, a deputy head of his administration reportedly resigned in protest over police violence against demonstrators, and several officers and military personnel shared photos and videos on social media showing them throwing out or destroying their uniforms and credentials.
One former officer wrote on Instagram beneath a photo of his police badge and awards, “17 years of service over. My conscience is clear. Police with the people.” At the time of publishing, it had more than 380,000 likes.
The defections have also spread to Belarus’s powerful state-run media machine, with several popular talk show hosts and news presenters announcing their departures over the government-ordered abuse of protesters.
“As a wife, mother, media employee, and citizen, I cannot calmly look at what is happening in the country now,” Marina Mishkina, a state-run radio station reporter, told Radio Free Europe’s Belarusian service. “I’m afraid of everything now. I walk down the street and I’m afraid. I open social networks and I’m afraid [of what I’ll see].”
Riot police officers numbering in the thousands have been deployed across the country, transforming public streets and squares where families once strolled into bloody battlegrounds. The largest concentration of them is in Minsk, where the protests are now in their fifth day, and the clashes on the streets the most violent.
Vasily Fedosenko / Reuters
A woman gestures during a rally following the presidential election in Minsk, Belarus, Aug. 10.
Police forces have used stun grenades, tear gas, rubber bullets, and as of Wednesday even live ammunition to suppress crowds of protesters. They have confiscated ambulances and used them to disguise their approach while hunting people down in the streets. And they have targeted journalists covering the events, beating them and destroying their equipment.
At least 68 journalists, including foreign journalists, have been detained, and 23 of those remain in detention facilities, the Russian MediaZona news site reported.
Minsk-based journalist Hanna Liubakova, citing her own sources, reported on Thursday that police had begun searching hotels for foreign correspondents. On Tuesday, the head of the immigration department in Belarus’s Foreign Ministry warned that reporters working without government accreditation would be arrested, deported, and banned from entering the country for 10 years.
The ministry refused to grant press accreditation to dozens of media outlets, including BuzzFeed News, that applied in the run-up to the election.
Meanwhile, authorities released dozens of the more than 6,000 demonstrators who have been arrested during the protests. They staggered out of detention facilities across Belarus and were met by anxious family and friends. Some of them recounted their horrific experiences while in detention.
Videos have surfaced in recent days of police abuse against demonstrators. In one widely shared video, dozens of them are seen being beaten by police with batons as they lay facedown in a compound surrounded by high walls and razor wire. In another, filmed from outside detention facilities, demonstrators can be heard screaming and pleading with police not to beat them. In a video aired on state television, a disguised voice off camera tells a group of young protesters, their faces badly bruised and hands tied behind their backs, to apologize and vow not to participate in more demonstrations.
Russian journalist Nikita Telizhenko, who was detained by police and held in a jail cell for 16 hours before being released, described enduring and witnessing vicious beatings as well as the horrific conditions in which people are kept.
At the police station, he said, “The guy in front of me, they purposely hit his head on the doorframe of the entrance to the police department. He screamed in pain. In response, they began to beat him on the head and shout: ‘Shut up, bitch!’”
He continued, “The first time they hit me, it was when they took me out of the police van. I didn’t bend down low enough and got hit with a hand to the head, and then with a knee in the face.”
Telizhenko described the room where protesters were being held as covered with “a living carpet” of people he had to walk on top of. Then he said police ordered him to lie facedown. “And there was nowhere to lie. People are lying around in pools of blood.”
August 13, 2020, at 12:01 p.m.
Correction: Alexander Lukashenko has served as president of Belarus since 1994. The year was misstated in an earlier version of this post.
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Christopher Miller is a Kyiv-based American journalist and editor.
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