'Torture Chamber': Jailed Belarusians Reveal Prison Abuse

[Rogue Valley]

'Torture Chamber': Jailed Belarusians Reveal Prison Abuse

Like a gambler who knows he has bet all he has and cannot afford to lose, the Belarusian strongman has doubled down.

Protester beaten by KGB security goons in a Minsk hospital.

8/14/20
Emerging from a jail in Minsk with other Belarusians detained in a post-election crackdown, 27-year-old math teacher Yana Bobrovskaya said she never expected to make it out alive. "We thought we would be buried in here," she said Friday, weeping as she recounted her experience to AFP. "They can do anything while you have no rights," she added. Bobrovskaya was one of hundreds of Belarusian protesters and chance bystanders who were being released after they were detained in a crackdown following President Alexander Lukashenko's disputed landslide win on Sunday. Hundreds of anguished friends and relatives were waiting outside the Minsk detention center, and several ambulances arrived to take injured people away. Many detainees gave harrowing accounts of beatings, humiliation and torture. Some women were threatened with rape, while men spoke of being ordered to strip naked and get down on all fours while officers beat them with truncheons, according to Amnesty International. One man told AFP he was burned with cigarettes, while another said he was given electric shocks and beaten with sticks. Many seemed unafraid to speak out and some men undressed to show AFP journalists their bruised buttocks and stomachs. Bobrovskaya said she spent three days without food with some 50 women crowded into a cell designed for four.

Olesya Stogova, a Russian citizen in her 30s, said she received equally inhumane treatment. Stogova said she was kicked and beaten with truncheons and there were almost 40 women in her four-person cell. When she said she was Russian, guards unleashed an expletive-laden tirade. "We'll do whatever we want. We'll leave you disfigured — you won't recognize yourself," she said guards told her. "It was a torture chamber," she said. Male detainees were treated even worse, she said. Ales Pushkin, a prominent Belarusian performance artist, said he was detained after a protest and beaten until he "turned blue." "All these days I've been brutalized," the 55-year-old told AFP. Protester Andrei Yanushka said he had been beaten on the head and body. Speaking just before an ambulance arrived to take him away, the 35-year-old said Lukashenko should no longer remain at the helm. "He cannot be president of Belarus," he said.

Democracy -- Alexander Lukashenka style.

There are reports of police officers joining the protesters and television news anchors quitting while on camera.

And right here in the United States, Donald Trump is assaulting mail-in balloting and our American Democracy.

Related: Lukashenko’s Gamble on Thuggishness