“It’s change you wanted? Here is some change for you! Want some more? Next time you’ll know when to stay home!” This is what police shouted at the men at one of Minsk’s main detention centres, as they beat them mercilessly. Witnessing this was only part of the ordeal that Katya Novikova, 34, endured last week. She was one of the nearly 7,000 people police in Belarus detained in just four days. I managed to speak with her just after she was released.
Protests have spread throughout Belarus after authorities tried to claim that the current president, Alexander Lukashenko, already in power for 26 years, had supposedly won flawed 9 August presidential elections by a landslide. Several of the protests involved clashes with police, but the vast majority were peaceful. Yet the round-ups by police were systematically brutal. Police officers mistreated and humiliated female detainees and viciously beat the men, cramming inmates into small cells that often had no place to sit, not to mention lie down, while depriving them of food, drinking water, and medical aid.
When the first detainees were released and told their stories, the level of public outrage was so staggering that people from all strata of Belarus society poured out to the street. Workers at several major state-owned enterprises went on strike demanding accountability for police violence and a free and fair repeat election.
