Last week, CNN reported that the Belarusian authorities were constructing a prison camp for dissidents at an old rocket storage facility. The camp, it said, could be used if protests in the country resume ahead of the anniversary of the presidential election on 9 August or the upcoming constitutional referendum.
Belarus’s defense ministry denied these allegations, and claimed that the site, in Novokolosovo, outside of Minsk, was merely being used for military storage. But one year after protests erupted in response to the apparent results of Belarus’ presidential elections, it’s not as if speculation about Belarusian prison camps has come from nowhere.
After the protests started, the Belarusian authorities set up an improvised detention camp for protesters near the city of Slutsk. Then, according to a phone conversation that leaked online, the head of Belarus’s organised crime squad, Nikolai Karpenkov, gave the following orders to his subordinates:
