"No ambulance called for guy whose head was injured”
Alyaksandr who spent 10 days in Zhodzina detention centre has told Euroradio about the prison conditions, cookery, jailed Lukashenka’s adherents.
Alyaksandr who spent 10 days in Zhodzina detention centre has told Euroradio about the prison conditions, cookery, jailed Lukashenka’s adherents and even a Snow Maiden.
Euroradio: What happened before you arrived in the detention centre? Did you see any severely beaten people?
Alyaksandr: There were 40 people in the police truck and there were not enough seats for everyone. There were people of different age – from 16 to 58 years old. They had not taken away our cell phones by that time so some people were making phone calls and a woman reported our names to the radio.
One person was sitting on the stairs and it was evident that his head was injured. He could be conscious but he was not reacting to anything. Everyone kept demanding to call an ambulance for him but it did not arrive.
We did not know where we were being driven to at first. The first things we asked for was water and toilet. They started allowing us to go to the toilet one by one 2 or 3 hours later. They gave us a little snow to drink.
Euroradio: What happened in the detention centre?
Alyaksandr: We were delivered to the detention centre in Akrestsina. We had to spread the eagle for a very long time there. Reports were drawn for everyone and it took 5 or 6 hours. We were led to the second floor, fingerprinted and videos of everyone were made there. Then we descended again. They had been sorting us for a long time, I changed 4 trucks. The special police troops behaved in an inadequate way. We were ordered to sit on the floor in the truck…
Euroradio: Where did they take you after trials?
Alyaksandr: They probably decided to free a few trucks on our way to Zhodzina. There was not enough room even in one truck and they decided to put people from three trucks into one. Special police troops were “tricky”: they pushed the people to the back of the truck, took a run and kept pressing more and more people in the truck with the help of their shoulders. They were grinning. They kept telling us: “You are going to be imprisoned together with real convicts” as well as some other phrases and were using bad language. Then they started playing the so-called “army dominoes”: they named 20 people who had to move towards the exit, arms crossed behind them, spreading the eagle, heads lowered…
Euroradio: What were your first impressions of the detention centre?
Alyaksandr: They put 30 of us in a cell for 8 people at first. Everyone started drinking water thirstily because it had not been given to us! Only one kind special police officer had brought us some snow and somebody else had brought Schweppes!
We thought that we would have to spend the whole time like that. Somebody dozed off for half an hour on the floor; some people were lying on bunk beds. However, we were sent to different cells later. They gave us so-called linen and a mattress stuffed with hare-skins. It did not look like it was 10 or 20 years old, it looked like it was 40 or 50. To tell the truth, there was a hunter among us who said that there could not be any fleas or bugs in hare-skins.
Euroradio: Who were your cellmates?
Alyaksandr: There were 8 people in my camera. I should say that only three of us found their names in the newspaper with a list of the detained brought to us. They said there were 600 detained but 5 of us did not find their names on that list! There were 8 people in my cell and only three of them did not have higher education – they were students. All the rest had higher education! They were not “a bunch of thugs”!
And not all of them had been in the square! There was a person in the cell who had just gone out to buy some beer! He said that he had voted for Lukashenka and that he did not need any meetings. To tell the truth, he changed his mind quickly. And his cellmates did not exercise any pressure on him.
Then they sorted people out in cells again and people from other cells were put in mine and I listened to new stories. One of them said that they had been having a birthday party in Nyamiha and had gone out for a smoke. The person whose birthday they had been celebrating got imprisoned for 15 days and two of his friends – for 10. Another man, a director of a logistics company, got detained while waiting for a taxi. He was worried about his business in his absence. Some were leaving the philharmonic society with a music book , others were leaving a shop with eggs and oil, still others had fresh linen in their backpacks.
They detained a woman who was working as a Snow Maiden during the Christmas holidays. I remember her saying in Akrestsina detention centre: what are you doing to me? I have to give a performance tomorrow! Then I overheard some guards saying that she was allowed to send a costume of an astrologer outside as an exception. She was probably detained with costumes.
Euroradio: How did employees of Zhodzina detention centre treat you?
Alyaksandr: The officers were okay, and the sergeants… it depended. The guards understood what we had been detained for, we had not stolen, smashed up or broken anything. We were not “a bunch of thugs crushing everything that was in the way”.
Our cell was transferred to Zhozina isolator for one day for some reason and we were jailed together with real convicts there. We were scared on the way there because we thought they were going to cook up charges against us. Probably there was not enough room in the detention centre and the administration arranged it so we kept being brought here and there all the time. People spend three days until they are accused in the isolator. I was in a cell with four people; three of them were from “the square” and one old man was a cell phone thief. There were no problems with him. However, the others had problems because they were jailed together with more experienced prisoners. The convicts kept singing and laughing in the truck and one of them shouted out that the prosecution had asked to imprison him for 14 years. They shouted: Hello, black stork!
When we arrived there from the detention centre, the attitude was different: they said why are you holding your arms behind you? You are not prisoners, you are normal people!
Euroradio: Another person jailed in Zhodzina detention centre said that everyone had been interrogated by a KGB officer…
Alyaksandr: They did interrogate us, but I am not sure all of them were KGB members. I was interrogated on the 9th day, in the shower room of the detention centre, maybe there were no more free rooms. The investigator was using a type-writer and one more person was being interrogated simultaneously. The list of about 30 questions was standard: where did you hear about the square, was the avenue blocked, do you know any opposition leaders, do you know any of them personally, did you hear the police urging to stop the disorders.
Euroradio: The other released say that some people were being driven away off into the sunset from the detention centre after those interrogations…
Alyaksandr: They came to a guy who was sitting silently on the second day of the arrest and said: gather your things and come with us. I do not know where he went.
Euroradio: Describe the prison cookery.
Alyaksandr: I will never forget the first meal – they gave us bread and water. I thought that was it! (laughs) However, they started giving us food! The food was very health-giving! (laughs) No salt, nothing. Some cereal, cabbage soup, the same soup without water was for supper. We washed it down in the lavatory pan at first and then refused to accept it.
We had very strange spaghetti Bolognese. They probably overcooked it a lot because you could guess it was spaghetti only when you tasted it. It looked like some mass. But it was with tinned stew! The bread was very strange, they have their own bakery. I had never seen underbaked stale bread before. At the same time, we had a lot of parcels from friends, relatives and angels – thank them very much! However, they did not let them send us any food, only some things.
Alyaksandr: There were 40 people in the police truck and there were not enough seats for everyone. There were people of different age – from 16 to 58 years old. They had not taken away our cell phones by that time so some people were making phone calls and a woman reported our names to the radio.
One person was sitting on the stairs and it was evident that his head was injured. He could be conscious but he was not reacting to anything. Everyone kept demanding to call an ambulance for him but it did not arrive.
We did not know where we were being driven to at first. The first things we asked for was water and toilet. They started allowing us to go to the toilet one by one 2 or 3 hours later. They gave us a little snow to drink.
Euroradio: What happened in the detention centre?
Alyaksandr: We were delivered to the detention centre in Akrestsina. We had to spread the eagle for a very long time there. Reports were drawn for everyone and it took 5 or 6 hours. We were led to the second floor, fingerprinted and videos of everyone were made there. Then we descended again. They had been sorting us for a long time, I changed 4 trucks. The special police troops behaved in an inadequate way. We were ordered to sit on the floor in the truck…
Euroradio: Where did they take you after trials?
Alyaksandr: They probably decided to free a few trucks on our way to Zhodzina. There was not enough room even in one truck and they decided to put people from three trucks into one. Special police troops were “tricky”: they pushed the people to the back of the truck, took a run and kept pressing more and more people in the truck with the help of their shoulders. They were grinning. They kept telling us: “You are going to be imprisoned together with real convicts” as well as some other phrases and were using bad language. Then they started playing the so-called “army dominoes”: they named 20 people who had to move towards the exit, arms crossed behind them, spreading the eagle, heads lowered…
Euroradio: What were your first impressions of the detention centre?
Alyaksandr: They put 30 of us in a cell for 8 people at first. Everyone started drinking water thirstily because it had not been given to us! Only one kind special police officer had brought us some snow and somebody else had brought Schweppes!
We thought that we would have to spend the whole time like that. Somebody dozed off for half an hour on the floor; some people were lying on bunk beds. However, we were sent to different cells later. They gave us so-called linen and a mattress stuffed with hare-skins. It did not look like it was 10 or 20 years old, it looked like it was 40 or 50. To tell the truth, there was a hunter among us who said that there could not be any fleas or bugs in hare-skins.
Euroradio: Who were your cellmates?
Alyaksandr: There were 8 people in my camera. I should say that only three of us found their names in the newspaper with a list of the detained brought to us. They said there were 600 detained but 5 of us did not find their names on that list! There were 8 people in my cell and only three of them did not have higher education – they were students. All the rest had higher education! They were not “a bunch of thugs”!
And not all of them had been in the square! There was a person in the cell who had just gone out to buy some beer! He said that he had voted for Lukashenka and that he did not need any meetings. To tell the truth, he changed his mind quickly. And his cellmates did not exercise any pressure on him.
Then they sorted people out in cells again and people from other cells were put in mine and I listened to new stories. One of them said that they had been having a birthday party in Nyamiha and had gone out for a smoke. The person whose birthday they had been celebrating got imprisoned for 15 days and two of his friends – for 10. Another man, a director of a logistics company, got detained while waiting for a taxi. He was worried about his business in his absence. Some were leaving the philharmonic society with a music book , others were leaving a shop with eggs and oil, still others had fresh linen in their backpacks.
They detained a woman who was working as a Snow Maiden during the Christmas holidays. I remember her saying in Akrestsina detention centre: what are you doing to me? I have to give a performance tomorrow! Then I overheard some guards saying that she was allowed to send a costume of an astrologer outside as an exception. She was probably detained with costumes.
Euroradio: How did employees of Zhodzina detention centre treat you?
Alyaksandr: The officers were okay, and the sergeants… it depended. The guards understood what we had been detained for, we had not stolen, smashed up or broken anything. We were not “a bunch of thugs crushing everything that was in the way”.
Our cell was transferred to Zhozina isolator for one day for some reason and we were jailed together with real convicts there. We were scared on the way there because we thought they were going to cook up charges against us. Probably there was not enough room in the detention centre and the administration arranged it so we kept being brought here and there all the time. People spend three days until they are accused in the isolator. I was in a cell with four people; three of them were from “the square” and one old man was a cell phone thief. There were no problems with him. However, the others had problems because they were jailed together with more experienced prisoners. The convicts kept singing and laughing in the truck and one of them shouted out that the prosecution had asked to imprison him for 14 years. They shouted: Hello, black stork!
When we arrived there from the detention centre, the attitude was different: they said why are you holding your arms behind you? You are not prisoners, you are normal people!
Euroradio: Another person jailed in Zhodzina detention centre said that everyone had been interrogated by a KGB officer…
Alyaksandr: They did interrogate us, but I am not sure all of them were KGB members. I was interrogated on the 9th day, in the shower room of the detention centre, maybe there were no more free rooms. The investigator was using a type-writer and one more person was being interrogated simultaneously. The list of about 30 questions was standard: where did you hear about the square, was the avenue blocked, do you know any opposition leaders, do you know any of them personally, did you hear the police urging to stop the disorders.
Euroradio: The other released say that some people were being driven away off into the sunset from the detention centre after those interrogations…
Alyaksandr: They came to a guy who was sitting silently on the second day of the arrest and said: gather your things and come with us. I do not know where he went.
Euroradio: Describe the prison cookery.
Alyaksandr: I will never forget the first meal – they gave us bread and water. I thought that was it! (laughs) However, they started giving us food! The food was very health-giving! (laughs) No salt, nothing. Some cereal, cabbage soup, the same soup without water was for supper. We washed it down in the lavatory pan at first and then refused to accept it.
We had very strange spaghetti Bolognese. They probably overcooked it a lot because you could guess it was spaghetti only when you tasted it. It looked like some mass. But it was with tinned stew! The bread was very strange, they have their own bakery. I had never seen underbaked stale bread before. At the same time, we had a lot of parcels from friends, relatives and angels – thank them very much! However, they did not let them send us any food, only some things.
