Journalist Tatsiana Belashova: Akrestsina is a manmade hell

We spent 2 days at Akrestsi­na deten­tion cen­ter, with­out any police reports or tri­als.  On the third day, 8 peo­ple from our com­pa­ny were sud­den­ly released at 4 a.m., with a warn­ing under arti­cle 23.34, as if they rep­ri­mand­ed us gen­tly «do not get caught again». Since there is no police report or court deci­sion on Ale­na’s case either, I real­ly hope that she will be released today. There were long lines of peo­ple at the yard of Akrestsi­na cen­ter at night, and they released two peo­ple every few min­utes. That took sev­er­al hours. That is, they let a lot of peo­ple out, but seem to bring even more peo­ple in.

Akrestsi­na is a man­made hell. Police vans arrived every night, after mid­night, and we heard from our cell many men scream­ing of pain, at once.

Every guy who was there can tell you about the pro­ce­dure: the door of police van opens and one is to get out and run between the rows of police­men to the end of the huge yard, and they are ham­mer­ing one’s back and neck with batons the entire time. After that, ambu­lances arrive and take some peo­ple away, while the oth­ers are reg­is­tered and sent to cells.

In Akrestsi­na cen­ter, the guards treat peo­ple bru­tal­ly, too, espe­cial­ly men, they go cer­tain­ly go all out to humil­i­ate peo­ple as much as pos­si­ble.  It is almost impos­si­ble to call an ambu­lance for the inmates. One of our cell­mates had her ten­dons and mus­cles torn by a baton dur­ing deten­tion. She was get­ting worse every day, today she was almost faint­ing and scream­ing in pain, but no one called the ambu­lance. .

I see, they now don’t keep peo­ple there for long — due to over­crowd­ing, there is no time for police reports and tri­als, and they try to release peo­ple quick­ly, with a warn­ing under arti­cle 23.34. Appar­ent­ly, this time their goal is not to prof­it from fines, but to scare as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble with­in the short­est time.
And a bit on the house­hold busi­ness: a cell for four (about 10 sq. m.) there were 20 peo­ple on the first night , 35 — on the sec­ond, and 46 today. They gave us food only once in two days (for some girls it was once in three days). The tem­per­a­ture in the cell is about 30 degrees, the win­dow is slight­ly open, but this does not help.

But one can hear all the mes­sages from the peo­ple out­side: their sup­port, and what time it is, and boo­ing at the police vans. Thank you for that. And thank you to those peo­ple who spend here all night and take the released peo­ple home — no stuff has been returned, and peo­ple come out with­out phones or mon­ey.  They told me to come get my things when every­thing has calmed down, and if I was lucky, I’d find some­thing. So maybe I wil nev­er see my phone again. But the main thing is to get every­one out of there as soon as pos­si­ble.

Thank you all again for your sup­port. Hugs  )