No Drink Water, No Pen – Journalist Tells about Imprisonment Conditions

Dzia­n­is Ivashyn was detained in Min­sk on March 25 and sen­tenced to 5 days’ arrest.

Dur­ing the pro­ce­dures, his admin­is­tra­tive report was redesigned twice. The court offi­cers did not tell the pub­lic for quite a long time that the jour­nal­ist was on tri­al at this very court, at the Frun­zen­s­ki dis­trict of Min­sk.

Now the jour­nal­ist tells how it all went by:

“Not very com­fort­able. This is not year 1937, but close to that (editor’s note — 1937 the year of hard­est repres­sions when many pris­on­ers were exe­cut­ed). I am strong­ly con­vinced that all the con­di­tions for tor­tures have been cre­at­ed fol­low­ing an order from above. We did not have drink­ing water. We were giv­en a small glass of tea, 100 – 150 ml. And no more drink­ing water but this. The food was impos­si­ble to eat, I sim­ply threw it up.

I want­ed to write a com­plaint, but was not giv­en a pen – they told us we could dam­age our­selves with a pen. We were unable to lodge appeals or cas­sa­tions. Of course, this is against the law.

The guards treat­ed us like mali­cious crim­i­nals. I have the infor­ma­tion that some guys had stayed for five hours out­doors fixed with hands at the back and legs wide apart.

In my view, there had been an order from above to fright­en peo­ple, to tor­ture them to the max­i­mum. All was done to pre­vent peo­ple from going out to protest.”

Next, the jour­nal­ist is going to appeal against the court deci­sion and to hold the per­sons involved liable. “I have doc­u­ment­ed proofs of my inno­cence, show­ing that I had been per­form­ing my pro­fes­sion­al duties. I have doc­u­ment­ed proofs of forgery of pro­ce­dur­al doc­u­ments by wit­ness­es. I have proofs against the judge who took the unlaw­ful deci­sion. I will lodge the cas­sa­tion appeal to the Min­sk City Court.”

The jour­nal­ist com­mit­ted to strug­gle for jus­tice, thanked every­one who sup­port­ed him.

There are still 4 jour­nal­ists behind bars in Min­sk, includ­ing Ali­ak­sad­nr Barazen­ka, who is keep­ing the hunger strike (15 days), and 3 BAJ mem­bers serv­ing terms in Viteb­sk; the terms vary from 10 to 15 days.