Journalist Ivan Murauyou talks about his three days in detention

He could­n’t help cry­ing not because he had­n’t slept for 3 days, had­n’t eat­en, had been beat­en and yelled at, and had spent almost a day in a humil­i­at­ing and extreme­ly uncom­fort­able posi­tion on his knees and with his head on the floor in the gym of the Per­shamais­ki dis­trict police depart­ment of Min­sk, and the 2 oth­er days — in a cold ‘walk­ing’ cell at Akrestsi­na, with new beat­ings and humil­i­a­tions. He was cry­ing because he saw a rock put at the entrance door, with a bar­rel of water and a pack­age of med­i­cines and ban­dages. Thank you, neigh­bors! «From that moment on, my 3 days of tri­als and adven­tures semmed some­how dis­tant and unim­por­tant, because it became clear to me that every­thing was not in vain and we have already Won! We have become a peo­ple! We are Belaru­sians! We have our own opin­ion and we have learned to defend it!

It all start­ed on Tues­day, as a good and inter­est­ing Hol­ly­wood action movie, from the moment when our car was stopped by a traf­fic police­man. Two police offi­cers ran to the car imme­di­ate­ly, their eyes looked insane. Either because of the adren­a­line and excite­ment of the hunt, or they were stoned. Peo­ple in black uni­forms demand­ed to see our phones. The phone of my friend and col­league Pavel Pat­a­pau had pho­tos from street «fes­tiv­i­ties «(Yes, this is what the state media call the protests), and I had rants and videos from the same places that I did for the Zvez­da TV chan­nel, Rus­sia. We were imme­di­ate­ly grabbed and thrown into a police van. They yelled at us and start­ed beat­ing us. Dur­ing two hours, the pris­on­er trans­port vehi­cle was filled with new pas­sen­gers, accord­ing to the same sce­nario. They throw a per­son inside, beat them, and close them in a «glass» (small cells inside the van)… The offi­cers kept swear­ing. If you trans­late their speech into a nor­mal lan­guage, the mean­ing boils down to the fol­low­ing: «You are bad peo­ple liv­ing in this city and this coun­try and who dared to have their own opin­ion. For this you will be maimed, beat­en and humil­i­at­ed. After all, you dared to be against HIM and us, HIS loy­al troops.» The police van was grad­u­al­ly filled up, and the peo­ple inside licked their wounds, got acquaint­ed and told about the rea­sons they had end­ed up in the «glass»: rid­ing a bike, dri­ving a car, walk­ing past, a white rib­bon on their hand. In fact, there were no active pro­test­ers there, but only civil­ians who, accord­ing to the riot police, were crim­i­nals.… .

Final­ly, the police van is full and start­ed to move… They throw us out in the yard of some build­ing, with my head on the ground, put my hands behind my back, beat me again, push me into a gym, order me to kneel, with my head on the floor (this is basi­cal­ly the posi­tion that I will spend the next 15 hours of my life in). They begin to write down peo­ple’s names, date of birth, and address. Riot police are rag­ing near­by, some­one is being hit very hard, blows and groans of peo­ple every­where. Those who were inter­viewed are searched and their belong­ings are tak­en away. While I’m wait­ing for my turn, I sneak a peek. In this posi­tion, the world becomes dif­fer­ent. I see the legs in blue pants with red stripes, ambling around. For me, the the feet seem to walk the ceil­ing, one of the blue pants have a split seam on the ass, and I see pink (yes, don’t laugh) under­pants… I can still under­stand the aggres­sion of the riot police, they’ve been espe­cial­ly trained for that, but when peo­ple of seri­ous ranks behave like hood­lums… I can’t get that. .

The gym we were held at

Like a scene after scene in a bad movie,  we were beat­en, some­times tak­en to the toi­let, and beat­en again. Same dia­logues again and again, and their humor was worse than ever: «Toi­let okay, but oops, there is no toi­let», etc. They allowed us to lie down on the floor for a while, with our faces down, and then again put us back on our knees. Men­tor­ing speech­es about how we want to sur­ren­der the coun­try to the fas­cists and do not under­stand who is doing Good on the whole earth, etc. The butch­ers in uni­form sin­gled out sev­er­al peo­ple who they con­sid­ered spe­cial ene­mies and who they beat espe­cial­ly hard. A hand­some curly-haired guy who returned from work in Israel was beat­en real­ly hard. They beat him in the gym, then dragged him into the toiled and con­tin­ued the beat­ing; he was not allowed to lie down to rest. They came up to him say­ing: «Well, what? You’re a fight­er! Come on, fight me!» It was extreme­ly dis­gust­ing, even more dis­gust­ing than swear­ing. There are a lot of them, they are pro­tect­ed by the law «On police». . It was also time for heroes. After 24 hours of moral and phys­i­cal pres­sure, we were able to remain with our opin­ion, and some even man­aged to express it. I was sin­cere­ly impressed by a man named Las­tous­ki (lat­er I found out that his name is Dzi­ma and he is actu­al­ly a rel­a­tive of the for­mer spokesman of Min­sk city police depart­ment, Alexan­der Las­tous­ki, my class­mate). The guy kept say­ing that they had no right to mal­treat us, that the order to beat us is crim­i­nal and it should not be exe­cut­ed. He was then beat­en again. And again he would say what he thought was right.

This is how we spend the first day. Noth­ing inter­est­ing.… .… .

Time dragged end­less­ly. I guess the police did­n’t know what to do with us because all jails were crowd­ed, and they were look­ing for some way to get rid of us, because it was almost evening, so they were expect­ing a new batch of peo­ple. . After the protest actions on August 10, about 180 peo­ple were reg­is­tered in the police sta­tion, and the next day, our group, about 80 peo­ple.

New scene. They take us to Akrestsi­na deten­tion cen­ter.  In prin­ci­ple, the «check-in» at Akrestsi­na was no dif­fer­ent from one in the police depart­ment. Beat­ings again, we are again on our knees, but this time our faces were not on the wood­en floor, but on the grass. The action took place out­side. It should be not­ed that lit­tle stones are a rather unpleas­ant thing. . Then we were put not even in a cell, but a ‘walk­ing’ cell, a kind of stone bag with bars over the evening sky. . Guess how many of us were there? Wrong… there were already guys from the protest actions on August 9 in the ‘cell’, and togeth­er with us the total num­ber of «guests » reached 102 peo­ple, and by the mid­dle of the night we were already 147, a new batch of guys from Pushkin­skaya square was brought in. Every­thing is known by com­par­i­son. So on August 13, the riot police was even more aggres­sive with the tor­tures.  All the new «res­i­dents» of the H1 cell had their clothes torn, their pants just torn to shreds. They were beat­en more seri­ous­ly, but more care­ful­ly, the police aimed for inter­nal organs. They had num­bers on their backs. Frun­zen­s­ki police depart­ment police did not both­er to read the names on a piece of paper, but sim­ply drew num­bers on the boys ’ backs and said that they now have no names, only a num­ber. Bril­liant move, I imme­di­ate­ly think of the NKVD and the Nazis!

Well, the night was quite bad.  After all, my first night was indoors and on a wood­en floor, although with some drafts. At Akrestsi­na, I had to spend the night on con­crete under the sky in stripes. Hon­est­ly, I did not think that I would be so sin­cere and hap­py to hug men, very, very many men at once. It was real­ly, real­ly cold.

And now the morn­ing is com­ing. They start tak­ing us out. Those who have already been con­vict­ed are sent to jail in Zhodz­i­na, but the pen­i­ten­tiary sys­tem of the Repub­lic of Belarus does not have enough resources, and they let me out . But … first the last «adven­ture». We are being chased through the «cor­ri­dor of Shame», as they think. For me, this is the «Path of Pride». They put us against a wall, beat us again, some of us hard­er, some of us not so much, some of us are also kicked, and elec­tro­cut­ed with a stun gun. . Just imag­ine I’m lying with my face down on the grass, a riot police­man hits me with a baton and sud­den­ly …  he asks me the ques­tion: «Who do you love?» I am silent. «I said, who do you love?» I’m at a loss as to what answer he expects from me. And here he says: «and I love Belarus! You love Belarus, too! We will not give the coun­try to the nazis!» Pure sur­re­al­ism. Some of their brain­whash­ers have com­plete­ly lost their grip on real­i­ty…

PS Thank you to the vol­un­teers from the human rights cen­ter «Vias­na». I did­n’t have to watch anoth­er scene called «the road home across the city with­out a pen­ny of mon­ey or a phone»

P. P. S. And again, thank you neigh­bors! Thank you, I love you! You made my day!