Hospitalized Belarusian journalist Alena Scharbinskaya tells of beatings inside Minsk detention center

Scharbin­skaya told CPJ she was beat­en so severe­ly that she was hos­pi­tal­ized after she was released with­out charges on August 13. Accord­ing to data com­piled by the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists (BAJ), at least 29 of the approx­i­mate­ly 68 jour­nal­ists who have been detained since the August 9 elec­tion were bru­tal­ized by police. 

CPJ called Akrestsin, offi­cial­ly the Cen­ter for the Iso­la­tion of Offend­ers, for com­ment but nobody picked up. 

CPJ inter­viewed Scharbin­skaya by phone on August 15. Though still in the hos­pi­tal, she said she was in rel­a­tive­ly good con­di­tion. Two days lat­er she wrote CPJ via mes­sag­ing app that she was feel­ing worse, with a high fever. Her answers have been light­ly edit­ed for length and clar­i­ty.

How were you detained?

Late in the evening of August 10 after report­ing on protests for Bel­sat, I was out­side the police sta­tion wait­ing in line with a col­league who want­ed to file a com­plaint about her miss­ing hus­band. Her hus­band is also a col­league of mine at Bel­sat, where he works as a cam­era oper­a­tor. Sud­den­ly, two police vehi­cles stopped near us and peo­ple in black jumped out. It was OMON, a spe­cial police unit. One of the police offi­cers force­ful­ly grabbed my left arm and start­ed lit­er­al­ly drag­ging me to the police bus. I had my phone in my right hand, and man­aged to look at it — it was 10:23 p.m. When the police offi­cer noticed that I had my phone, he took it with such force, it hurt me bad­ly. 

Then the offi­cers stuffed the police bus with all the peo­ple who were near the police sta­tion, includ­ing myself. In the bus, the OMON offi­cers were a lit­tle more gen­tle as there were some seniors inside. They drove us for some time through the city and then trans­ferred us to anoth­er vehi­cle which had sev­er­al closed com­part­ments. They sep­a­rat­ed women from men. The sec­tion where they placed us was tiny, with too lit­tle space for so many peo­ple. We could hard­ly breath. Blood was on the walls of the vehi­cle, at least in my com­part­ment. Then they drove us to Akrestsin, the main deten­tion cen­ter in Min­sk, and left us there. 

What hap­pened in Akrestsin?

First, they put me and oth­er women in a sec­tion called “karcer,” a sort of small yard with walls and barbed wire instead of a ceil­ing. They took away our belts, shoelaces, chains, and such things. Then they start­ed sum­mon­ing us inside for search and inspec­tion, one after the oth­er. I was the first one to be inspect­ed by a female OMON offi­cer who has become known all over Belarus for her par­tic­u­lar­ly cru­el treat­ment of detainees. Jour­nal­ists are now try­ing to iden­ti­fy her. Her name was either Kristi­na or Kari­na. As she was tak­ing me to the inspec­tion room, “Kristi­na” was push­ing me and hit­ting my back with a baton. She inten­tion­al­ly chose the parts of my body where it would hurt the most. 

After the inspec­tion, when I was still half-naked, she pushed me out of the room and through a cor­ri­dor full of naked men with their hands behind their backs, fac­ing the wall. Their bod­ies and heads were cov­ered in blood. There was a lot of blood. It was clear that they were bad­ly beat­en. There were men who were moan­ing, some couldn’t help but shout from pain. Police offi­cers addressed them only in curs­es.

Where were you tak­en after that?

Women were tak­en to dif­fer­ent prison cells, apart from the men. I was placed in cell num­ber nine on the sec­ond floor, in the sec­tion of Akrestsin where peo­ple who were accused of vio­lat­ing pub­lic order laws are kept. It was a cell of approx­i­mate­ly 12 square meters [about 129 square feet] with two bunkbeds for four inmates. But we were 26 peo­ple in there. Many of us had to sleep on the floor. The first 24 hours, they did not give us any food. The only thing we had was tap water with a strong chlo­rine taste. There was no toi­let paper. It was very stuffy and hot in the cell. On August 11, they brought more women into the cell, and at one point there were some 50 women inside. There was no place to sit; we had to stand. 

Can you go into fur­ther detail about your treat­ment? 

I was beat­en in the “karcer,” then dur­ing the walk to the inspec­tion. On the morn­ing of August 11, the same woman, “Kristi­na,” beat me again [when I was tak­en to the inter­ro­ga­tion room]. She kicked me in the stom­ach with her knees. All women [who were tak­en to the inter­ro­ga­tion room] had to bend down and keep their hands behind their backs as they moved along the cor­ri­dor. If they weren’t able to bend down and keep their hands behind their backs for one rea­son or anoth­er, they were beat­en with batons. On the after­noon of August 13, “Kristi­na” beat me again in the same way. In the evening, I was released. 

You are in the hos­pi­tal now. What’s your con­di­tion? 

As I was being released, I faint­ed because of ter­ri­ble pain. I was tak­en to the hos­pi­tal. The doc­tors say that there are huge inner injuries in the low­er part of my body, hematomas and blad­der injuries. I also feel pain in my back as “Kristi­na” had beat my back with a baton.

How do you explain the cru­el­ty? 

I don’t know. When they were beat­ing us, they were say­ing, “You go to ral­lies because you want to over­throw the gov­ern­ment.” They were telling us, “The author­i­ties are good. You want to orga­nize anoth­er ‘Ukraine’ in Belarus. You want blood. You want to orga­nize anoth­er ‘Maid­an’ in the coun­try,” [refer­ring to the 2014 Ukrain­ian rev­o­lu­tion, large­ly cen­tered at Inde­pen­dence Square in Kyiv, also called Maid­an square, which result­ed in the ouster of Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Vik­tor Yanukovych].  

How long will you have to stay in the hos­pi­tal?

First, about the hos­pi­tal. There are many men in the hos­pi­tal. They were all beat­en so bad­ly, it’s shock­ing to look at them. Some of them have seri­ous life-threat­en­ing injuries. I walk around the hos­pi­tal and talk to patients as a jour­nal­ist. 

I know one man, here in the hos­pi­tal, who was raped with a police baton. The men here in the hos­pi­tal tell about the OMON offi­cers’ behav­ior in police cars. [They say] the offi­cers would throw one detainee on top of anoth­er and walk over their bod­ies. 

Com­pared to the men in the hos­pi­tal, I can say that I am in good con­di­tion as I have noth­ing but a hematoma and pain in the low­er part of my body. But the doc­tors have to do some addi­tion­al tests and then they will decide what should be done. The doc­tors are afraid that after such beat­ings, inter­nal bleed­ing may start. 

What do you feel toward OMON?

There is such a huge feel­ing of hatred inside me. I nev­er felt like that before. I will try to get rid of it, maybe work with a psy­chother­a­pist. This feel­ing is destroy­ing me. But I will not stop my work, I am not fright­ened as a jour­nal­ist though I under­stand that every­thing may start again, and I may suf­fer much more than I did now. No, they did not fright­en us.