Security officers captured 18-year-old Dzyanis on the street when he got off the trolley and was walking to the train. After checking his documents, they detained him and dragged him into a minibus, and later brought him to a paddy wagon. There, the guy was put on his knees with his head hit hard on metal. He and the other detainees were taken to the local police department.
There, according to the young man, he was bullied and insulted. It wasn’t even the riot policemen who behaved more aggressively, but the department staff themselves.
“There was a woman police officer with a metal bat. She walked around, hitting people on the head, saying we were bastards. One of the policemen made us say that Alyaksandr Ryhoravich was the best president. Those who didn’t say it were beaten up.
Dzyanis was beaten only with fists and was kicked, without using batons. The guy says he was “lucky” because he was chosen to record a TV report that was later shown in the evening program Panarama. In the story Dzyanis says that he and other detainees were coordinated and incited to provocation by foreign coordinators.
“The boss told then not to beat me up too much. “I was put in a separate room. Some man ordered me to voice a specific text. He said if I did not remember it or refused, I would be shot or put in jail for 15 years for drugs”.
The detainees were even given water in the Akrestsina detention center, the young man said. But that was the end of the human attitude.
They looked for journalists and severely beat them.
Then there was a prison in Zhodzina. People were insulted, put on stretches, beaten up. Dzyanis heard the sounds of a saw and people screaming. There were 52 people in a 12-bed cell. Not even toilet paper was given to them.
“They told us to use our hands to wipe. There was only one security guard who gave us the paper in all that time. They were looking for journalists and they beat them up on purpose. There were people from Akrestsina. They said that they were beaten harder there, but when they heard stories from the Frunze police department, they said that even they didn’t have it so bad. Those who had tattoos were beaten up harder”.
Now Dzyanis is free and has reached his parents. The young man was forced to sign a document that stated he had to appear in court, otherwise he would not have been released.
