“We were in total solidarity in the cell, everyone supporting everyone. There were humans there, but those who had locked us up were not humans”

Photo Project team August2020

We are sitting on a comfortable sofa in a light-flooded room. Pavel has a cat sleeping in his lap, another cat keeps rubbing against my arm and purring into my mike. Neighbours are cooking dinner. There is a huge screen in front of us and a film projector behind: at night there will be a screening. I have a nagging sensation that Pavel’s story, too, is a film plot. It stands in sharp contrast to his quiet everyday life, and he tells it smoothly and softly, on the same note. It is only when he recalls his cellmates that reality invades his room: one can speak with such warmth and love only about truly upright men.

– Tonight we have a meeting of graduates: my cellmates and I are getting together at a café. Almost everyone will be there, 15 out of 18. We will celebrate that all of us are alive and in relatively good health. Most of us found ourselves in the Zhodino prison on the night of 11 August, and almost all were released simultaneously, on the 14th. We had a curious selection in our cell: a guy with an Israeli passport, a citizen of Poland and even an intellectually impaired chap. Altogether 99% were detained when they went out for a walk or shopping. It’s as if they were simply raking people in, that was their logic.

 There are many stories like mine, my case is nothing special.

Police Vans

– On 10 August I went out to have a look at what was going on in the city. I walked from Pushkinskaya and reached Pobediteley Avenue. On that night, as I learned later, all action had been on Pushkinskaya. There was nothing much going on in the centre: it was quiet on the avenue, everything as usual, with people walking and driving by. I was just strolling, without any haste, looking around, fearing nothing and without a worry in my head. It turned out I was wrong.  

Not far from the Great Patriotic War Museum I heard a voice from a black bus: “Let’s pack this one up.” Three OMON men leaped out of the bus and asked to see my papers. I had my driving license and army service book on me, and there were about 30 Ukrainian hryvnias stuck in the book since my last trip to Ukraine. As soon as they saw the money, they said, “So you are a Uke to boot. Come here quick.” “What Uke? My army service book is Belarusian!” But there was no point arguing, they pushed me into the bus and took me to the stela. That was OMON’s field base, as far as I understood: when they opened the door, I saw about 50 police vans, they were all over the place.

I was taken out of the bus and into the first van, where a huge OMON officer looked at my papers, yelled at me, opened the door and pushed me out. The next van stood right across about three metres away. I trudged to it through a corridor of six OMON men, three to a side, and of course, each had a club in hand. So, one kicked me, another punched, still another clubbed, but I made it through somehow.

As soon as I entered the other van, two hefty OMON men grabbed me under my armpits, lifting me into the air, and with all their might threw me onto the floor towards the corner. They did it so violently that I smashed my head against the back wall of the van. Immediately afterwards a knee and a fist landed on my back and a booted foot on my head, “Unlock your phone, you jerk!”, somebody yelled and shoved my phone to me. In my situation entering the graphic key was a problem: I tried and failed perhaps five times.

So, I got several more blows in the face and back along with a torrent of curses. “Don’t play the fool with us,” they shouted. It was not until I unlocked my phone that they left me alone and switched attention to my neighbour. Then the door opened and about five more men were pushed in. They received a similar “welcome”, were piled on top of us and showered with clubs and fists.

Then they yelled, “Get up!”, and we climbed out, seen off with kicks and blows. Another corridor of six OMON men to the next van and more beatings. I made a quick passage: the steps were steeps, and I got such a mighty kick at the exit that I rolled off under the next van. I rose back onto my feet, was beaten up and kicked about some more and thrown inside.

As I see it, we were thrown from one van into another just to give us a hard time, otherwise what’s the point? Talking to these… - I cannot call them people – made no sense

If you opened your mouth, you got it even harder. I don’t know but I had the impression that they were high on something. The blows were hard and painful. And a direct blow in the nose from a hefty OMON man was very painful. I don’t remember in which van l got that blow, but I won’t forget it for a long time. After that ordeal in the vans I was blue or black-and-brown all over, like a panda.

The last van was divided into cubicles. They were designed for two detainees each, but we were packed into them six per cubicle. We were simply pounded into them, otherwise there is no way you can fit six men into one cubicle. We waited for another ten minutes until the van was full and then were driven to the district police station; it was Frunzenskaya, we learned later.
 

Police Station

– As we debarked from the van at the police station, there was a corridor of 20 rather than six club-wielding men. We ran, bent down as low as we could, the head held down and arms behind back, and each of those was clubbing us on the back, arms or head if they thought we were not bent down low enough. They were hitting out indiscriminately; I got a blow on the arm and didn’t feel my hand at all for about a quarter hour.

We were herded into a gym and made to lie face down and legs shoulder-width apart with our arms handcuffed behind our backs. We were about 80, and we lay like that for about eight hours. Then more people were brought in, there was not enough room for everyone, and we were stood against the wall, arms behind back. We stood like that for another eight hours. We were given no water for the first 15 hours. “You can do without. You, scums, have wrecked the whole city. Not allowed.” Then we were given some; I drank, perhaps, 100 grams in the 24 hours I was there. We all drank from the same bottle: they don’t care a damn about the pandemic. They escorted us to the WC, but you had to ask for a long time to be taken out. So, you stand and plea with them because you understand that another minute and it will start dribbling down your leg. But overall, it was bearable.  
 

– Then a new shift came on duty and all hell broke loose. It was a shift of monsters. The new guards started by tightening our handcuffs to the maximum. I still have traces on my wrists now, almost a fortnight later. Then we were put on our knees, face down, and we spent about six hours like that.

It was very frightening and very painful. Never before had I felt such pain

Beatings you can take: a blow is instantaneous, sharp pain, which is quickly gone. But those six hours on your knees on the wooden floor is torture, real torture. It hurt all over, the pain was hellish. You understand that if you don’t rise to your feet right now, this will be the end. But you cannot get up because they’ll start beating you. And they did. There was a man with high blood pressure next to me. He said: “I’m hypertensive, I cannot stand like this, I’ll die right now,” but they kept clubbing him. It was only three or four hours later that they allowed him to sit down. 

I was as quiet as a mouse there, trying to change posture imperceptibly: I would lean on my head to ease the load on my knees. I battered my head and had a mark on it for quite a while. One man nearby slightly turned his head and his neck locked up. He tightened up so he could not stir at all, but the guards didn’t care a bit. If anyone fainted, they just thrust some ammonia into his face or dragged him aside and left him lying on the floor.
 

While we kneeled like that the investigations head of the Frunzenskoye police station made us chant that we all loved our president, that we faggots had wrecked the entire city, that we will never do like that again, that we loved our state, and so on. So, we had to shout, “I love our effective president Alexander Grigorievich Lukashenko very much.” I cannot remember everything now, my head didn’t work properly. If you didn’t shout, you got clubbed on the ribs. If you shouted not loud enough, you got clubbed.
 

One young girl, born in ’93, one of those, would rush people at a run and kick them in the ribs. My cellmate got half a dozen such kicks. He said, “A good thing she’s light-weight: if it were a man, he would have broken all my ribs.” She took pleasure in violence, was always in a good mood, smiling and laughing. And she kept beating us. The cops themselves recounted that she would say, her eyes aglow: “They’ve brought us fresh meat to the gym, let’s go there.” There was a man there she knew and had had a conflict with. He was taken away somewhere, and when he was brought back 20 minutes later, he could barely move and his body was like a zebra’s, all bruised.

I was lucky, they didn’t beat me as hard as they had done in the vans. But there was another thing: standing on your knees was torture, the worst thing possible. I had about 20 bruises on me. Some men’s backs looked like the Union Jack. Have you seen pictures on the web? They all are real. But very few people had their pictures taken, there were far more of them with such bruises.

There was a biker there, and they kept beating him for an hour on end. Three of them stood and kept hitting him. Perhaps, I exaggerate because I didn’t have a wristwatch, I don’t know. But he got at least 150 blows. He bellowed like I don’t know what. He was lying, and those three stood over him and kept hitting him. Some men were taken aside. Do you know the sound of a leatherette mat dropping on the floor of the gym? Loud and resonant? That’s the sound of a rubber club landing on a man’s back. They would club us with a swing, with all their might, as hard as they could.
 

That was what we had to shout: “I love our effective president Alexander Grigorievich Lukashenko very much

– Yet there were some normal ones, with something human in them. There was one captain just sitting there, leaning on the desk, and watching everything with huge empty eyes, as if saying, “What are they doing?” Later, when we were being taken out and there were few people around, he stood next to me. I would hunker down, and he slightly pushed me with his foot to let me know I should kneel so he would not be roasted.

I might even have got through to one of them. It turned out someone had dumped some drugs way back in the van. Or perhaps, they wanted another arrest on their books, I don’t know. I had a maple leaf on my T-shirt, they might have thought it was marijuana. So, I was a suspect. They took me out and started working on me: “Just come clean, did you dump the drugs?” I got really scared. That’s the end, I thought. I just didn’t want to leave for some ten years under Article 328 for no fault of mine, just because I had been walking the street.

At first, I panicked, then pulled myself together, looked one of them straight in the eye and said: “But it isn’t mine.  Be a man, why are you doing this? I’ll be packed off for ten years right away.” They took me back into the station and never raised the matter again.

What helped? I inwardly cursed them. You sit quietly, muttering how you hate them, and you feel somewhat relieved. If curses had real power, they would have all dropped dead there. And I hoped and dreamed that I would be released at last.
 

Trial

Waiting is hard. You don’t know when it will end. I first thought we would be released in three or four hours. You’re just thinking that it will stop just now, indeed, it cannot last forever. It will stop. But it goes on and on.  

Then the judge came. We were called out in turn. When I rose from my knees, everything went black and I simply dropped down. Then I lay down for a while, sat for a while, had some water and went to the “trial”. The “trial” is when you sign the record without any idea of what is in there. There are three OMON men standing behind your back shouting, “Sign quick, you think you can read, scum?” I pretended I couldn’t concentrate and didn’t see where to put my signature, and during that time read about half a dozen lines of the charges. It was an administrative offence, nothing terrible. Then, when we were being driven to prison, they tried to scare us in the van: “Why do you think we are taking you to prison? You’ll all get 8 to 15 years each.” Many got really scared, and I tried to show them with my head and eyes that it was a lie.   

Then I was nearly released. They had lost the record and started writing it anew. The duty officer says: “Let me book him, put him in the duty room, find him not guilty, kick him around and let him out.” But the boss replies: “Just look at him, he’ll be back tomorrow.” And I was sitting there totally zonked out, only thinking about getting home, dropping down and sleeping for a thousand years. Twenty-four hours had passed since my detention. Those were the worst twenty-four hours in my life. In short, they wrote a new record, packed us into vans and off we went.  
 

Zhodino
 

We were taken out according to the already familiar routine: on all fours, heads down, through a corridor formed of OMON men and the blows of their batons. Those not lucky enough were sent to Okrestina. I was fortunate to be taken to Zhodino. Forty people were stuffed into a police van for ten. I was the last one to be just thrown in onto a heap of people. Exhausted and beaten up, they had spent 24 hours in torturous conditions and now had someone else thrown onto their heads and feet. We got somehow packed up along the way. They removed our handcuffs, but had our wrists zipped.  It was just awful. My hands turned blue, just livid, and numb. Somebody else had them real black.

That was how we were taken to Zhodino. Compared with the district police station, it was a holiday home. To begin with, another small corridor of local guards. Some just pushed, others threw half-hearted punches. We were no longer beaten up.  We were given three meals a day, swill that it was, we had it three times a day, even with tea and compote. We could sleep, there was enough water, we could somehow wash ourselves under the tap and even had soap! It was damned hot though: 18 of us in a cell for eight. You wash yourself a bit and in half an hour you’re again sticky, after all, the soap was in short supply. A slop-pail was right in the cell. A 22-years-old lad didn’t use it for the three days he was there. He just couldn’t do it in the presence of other people. He was then taken away in an ambulance.
 

What helped? I inwardly cursed them. You sit quietly, muttering how you hate them, and you feel somewhat relieved. If curses had real power, they would have all dropped dead there

We were put into a cell, with six people already there. They had been detained on 8 August, all of them poll watchers. They were really lucky: they hadn’t been beaten up, roughly speaking, had been detained and locked up in a civilized manner. They didn’t even have a single shiner. People were sitting there at night when we were brought in, all beaten up, tattered and messy. They were shocked. And the news made them even more shocked. Space was a hell of a lot tighter, but there was a hell of a lot more news. There was noise late into the night, with everybody saying what they thought of it and sharing their accounts.

We were in total solidarity in the cell, with everyone supporting everyone. Indeed, there were humans there, it was those who had locked us up that were not humans. Those six inside said right away that they were not going to sleep so that we could have some sleep. We used dominoes to draw lots to decide who would have the bunks. They were iron racks with thin mattresses thrown on. No big deal, but passable.

At first, we were afraid that we’d be beaten up again, but the old-timers reassured us. The staff was okay, sensible lads. Sometimes even shared a cigarette. They didn’t talk much to us, and to every question the answer was, “Just wait”.
 

All we could do there was play some games and sleep. We had dominoes from earlier inmates, who had made blocks of bread. They give loads of bread there, which is next to inedible, so it is easier to mould something of it and play. We moulded draughts and chess pieces, drew a chessboard on the table with an aluminum spoon and a backgammon board, and played. Then we managed to talk a guard into giving us a pencil, which he forgot to take back. It was better to draw with a pencil.

I had a funny selection of inmates. There was a guy with an Israeli passport. A typical Jew: short, podgy, and jovial. Never shut his mouth, a real walkie-talkie, priceless fellow. He amused and cheered everybody up, really top-class. By the way, he was an Israeli Defence Force reservist, who had served in the Israeli army for five years, seen the war and taken a 90 km loaded march across the desert. Even he said that he had never seen a district police station so fucked-up. They had been even less lucky to be held outdoors at the Sovetsky district police station for 24 hours. There was also a Polish citizen among us. When he was released, the ambassador met him and took him to his place. He was then put on a plane and seated in business class. Back home, he had a call from the President of Poland, who talked to him for twenty minutes.
 

I had a funny selection of inmates. There was a guy with an Israeli passport. A typical Jew: short, podgy, and jovial. Never shut his mouth

There was also a disabled young boy, about 25 years old with the mind of a three-year-old. He didn’t understand what was going on. At the police station, he was ordered, “Hands on the wall!” “Make me”, he’d reply. They beat him up, then stopped, but those next to him were beaten for his disobedience. We taught him to wash himself, everybody comforted him, saying that he would soon go home, and everything would be okay. He always kept waiting to be released and asking how many days were left. Like a child.

There was also a chap in the cell, whom that young girl at the police station punched under his ribs seven times. He slept nearly all the time – a real bad concussion of the brain. He had a hole in his head – a bad bruise, his head all covered with blood. He never could remember how he had been apprehended. All he recalled was that he had gone out to shop. Till the very end he stayed with just one sneaker on and a torn T-shirt. There was yet another chap, a miner from Soligorsk. He had just had laser eye surgery and was beaten up. One of his eyes went blind, and they never summoned a doctor for him. Meanwhile, an ambulance was called for those with broken arms and took them away.
 

Set free

Three days later we were suddenly set free. I was thus locked up for four days. When I came out and saw how many people were there waiting for us, my eyes filmed with tears. I was in a state of shock, and it didn’t occur to me to call my family. Some people told me, “You’ll be given a lift.” I got into a car they had pointed out and drove off. Already on the way I remembered to call my brother and learned that they were waiting for me outside the prison. They took two of my other cellmates home, including the disabled chap.

At home I took my time to soak in the bath and had a good sleep. On Monday I went to work, did my bit for two hours and realized that I was a total wreck: I was so tired after those two hours that they seemed like two weeks. It turned out that I had a concussion. My boss told me, “Go home and get well”. And he paid me for all the days I had stayed away. I didn’t go to the outpatients’ clinic because he had told me that he had no use for a sick-leave certificate. My sister is a doctor and she told me what sort of treatment I needed. “It’ll heal. Good to see you alive. And thanks God, nothing has been broken.”

To this day I’m still unable to pick up my things because they were downright lost somewhere. They were my backpack, a new phone that I had had for two weeks, my watch, purse, and papers. All my things are God knows where, and I would hardly be able to get them back. I went three times to look for them and had them checked at the police station and at Zhodino, all to no avail. Good I had left at least my passport at home and managed to have my shop discount card and SIM card restored.  

I’m quite stable psychologically, everything is okay. Still, the bad taste lingers on. Legally in any normal country what happened to me would be seen as kidnapping, mugging and robbery. In fact, that’s what it was. I still feel awful hatred for those beasts. I’m not a believer, but I do believe in karma. They’ll get what they deserve. Something will get them in this life. If not them, then their relatives, or their children. They are bound to face the music and experience something of the kind or worse. I feel relieved and calmer to think so. Not much, but just a little bit.

Yet, I’m not sorry that I didn’t stay at home and went outdoors then. I understand perfectly well that it was not in vain. All of us – those who found themselves behind bars – performed our function then: the people became united. Understandably, it was a tough experience, but it was not in vain. Everything that is going on in this world is not for nothing. Everything leaves its mark.

P.S. Filed a complaint about abuse of power and underwent a forensic examination. The Investigative Committee replied that his complaint had been received. In September he was summoned to appear before an investigator, who took a detailed account of what had happened.