Journalist Yauhen Nikalayevich: girls were beaten, humiliated, and stripped naked

Yauhen’s phone and cam­era were tak­en away and nev­er returned. He informed his col­leagues about his release at 1 a.m. via social net­works.

In the morn­ing, Yauhen came to the news­room. In sneak­ers with­out laces. He still has bruis­es on his face and body.

— I came to shoot on August 10. I saw police­men there. I came over and took a pic­ture of them. Then I got a phone call that riot police were com­ing. I walked down the street a cou­ple of meters, and saw them run­ning. I start­ed run­ning from them towards the build­ing of the city exec­u­tive com­mit­tee. And I see police­men with shields already run­ning from there. I raised my hands. I had a press badge on me. They grabbed me. And twist­ed my arms behind my back. They took me inside the build­ing of the exec­u­tive com­mit­tee. and threw me to the ground. I shout­ed «Jour­nal­ist!» They hit my head against the floor twice, then they hit me with a hand sev­er­al times. They took me to the toi­let. There I had to stand with my head against the wall, feet shoul­der-width apart. I stood there for half an hour. Then they let me sit on a chair and stopped the blood. I sat for anoth­er half hour. Then they threw me into a police van. I think it was the dri­ver who hit me twice with his hand. Then they brought us to the city police depart­ment. We were tak­en to the shoot­ing gallery. I saw about thir­ty peo­ple lying on one side. I was the first on the oth­er side. I lay on the floor, face down, hand­cuffed, for three hours. Then they let us stand up. It turned out our guards were riot police with machine guns and in full uni­form. We sat until three o’clock in the morn­ing. Then they start­ed to release peo­ple. They released the peo­ple who they just grabbed on the street, for noth­ing. . My friend, I, and anoth­er man were left in the police sta­tion, because some­body saw us on the 9th. Out of 70 peo­ple, only three were actu­al­ly detained.

They came and start­ed threat­en­ing us with charges under arti­cle 108 of the Crim­i­nal Code. We are charged with arti­cle 293, part 2. From 3 to 8 years. By the morn­ing, they drew up a report on our deten­tion. On the 11th, I sat all day with the inves­ti­ga­tor. After the inter­ro­ga­tion, I went out and saw that the boys were lying on the sec­ond floor in the lob­by of the city police depart­ment.

I asked for a lawyer. The lawyer wrote down that I had been beat­en. They brought me to the deten­tion cen­ter. Cell 7. There were 12 peo­ple in the cell for 4.  We tried to sleep. More or less. . They did­n’t let us use the toi­let. There was a buck­et. We only peed in there. We did­n’t go num­ber 2, so that it did­n’t stink. We prac­ti­cal­ly did­n’t eat any­thing for three days, so that we don’t want to go to the toi­let.

We were talk­ing through the bars. There was a guy in my cell. He threw some­thing at the police, as seen on the video. In the end, there were about eight of such peo­ple. The police said they act­ed as a group, although they did not know each oth­er. They were tak­en to Baranavichy. Then, a day lat­er they brought in the own­er of the for­eign lan­guages school. They start­ed say­ing he was the orga­niz­er, and paid pro­test­ers 30 rubles each. He said they threat­ened him with a gun. He said that he would coop­er­ate with the inves­ti­ga­tor if they showed those who he had giv­en 30 rubles.

On Wednes­day, at 11 p.m. they wrote that we were cleared of crim­i­nal charges. . But they charged us with 23.34 of the Admin­is­tra­tive Code, par­tic­i­pa­tion in an unau­tho­rized ral­ly.

Tri­als took place on Thurs­day. The tri­als resem­bled a mup­pet show.  Peo­ple who had been just shop­ping were sen­tenced to 15 days, and those who had par­tic­i­pat­ed in the ral­ly were giv­en 10 days. A per­son says he was­n’t there. And the police­man comes, and says that he was. That’s it, 15 days. There were at least two peo­ple who had­n’t been at the ral­ly in my cell. They were giv­en 15 days of jail because they did­n’t plead guilty.

On Thurs­day, they took us to anoth­er cell.

Then they put us in the police vans and took us to Ivat­se­vichy. We thought they were tak­ing us to a deten­tion cen­ter there. We arrived at a camp. They took us to puni­tive con­fine­ment cells. There were two of us in a cell. We slept on the floor, it was cold. They woke us up at 6 am. Then they brought mat­tress­es and blan­kets. In gen­er­al, they treat­ed us okay in Ivat­se­vichy. They did­n’t take us out­side. And they allowed no lawyer vis­its. They took us to have a show­er. Thank them very much for this. I made a rosary out of bread.

On Sun­day, at two o’clock, we heard peo­ple out­side shout­ing «Long live Belarus!». It was nice to hear.

I know that the girls who were detained on the 9th were stripped naked. Male guards exam­ined them. Peo­ple were beat­en.

Those detained on the 9th were beat­en hard­er. The offi­cers said «what’s wrong with you?», «You hope Tikhanouskaya to give you mon­ey?». Offi­cers who beat peo­ple were in masks. I was beat­en to bruis­es.