“During 5 years of being in prisons I have never seen anything like this !”
Dashkevich about tortures at Okrestina
Zmitser Dashkevich, a public figure and a Christian, got out of jail after being imprisoned for 15 days, which he spent at Okrestina and Baranovichi. There is his comment for “Nasha Niva” about his impressions on staying there.
“The desire to have a snack let me down. When I left the McDonald’s two Geelys arrived, and six soldiers of some unit jumped out of these cars. It wasn’t by chance: when I was detained, they called their colonel immediately to inform him that “the task was completed”. They brought me to the Moscow district police department and later on to Okrestina.
At first they put me into the general cell, but as soon as I fell asleep, they asked me to take my belongings and leave the cell. They brought me to a concrete cage. It is hard to clear the purpose of this cage — it is neither an isolation nor a solitary confinement cell. In either of those the plank beds can be reclined for the night, and there is always water. But that was generally a torture cell. I thought that after spending five years in prisons it is hard to surprise me, but this truly shocked me. There should be a public outcry about it.
In fact, they torture people in there. I was in the same cell as Sergey Maslouskiy, a traffic police colonel, he’d spent on that concrete 13 days. Next cell was occupied by Dmitriy Kulakouskiy, who resigned in August. They are not allowed to have neither toothpaste, nor pills or parcels from their relatives.
I was walking on that concrete and said “The only thing left is pouring water over us”, and the colonel replied “They did that”. It is a torture chamber, and sadists manage it. I asked why people sleep on the concrete floor, with no plank beds and no water. They shouted at me in reply “You filthy bastard, I will kick you that way, I will kick you every way”. It is impossible to translate it into a human language. People are spending a month with nothing in there, not even a shower, moreover, they take away your clothes before putting you into that cell, so that you suffer more.
I was more or less safe, as the heating season started and the batteries were warm, also the colonel while leaving left me his sweater, which I used to sleep on. Otherwise, one can die there within a month, it is so unspeakably crazy there, we should cry out loud about it all the time. They understand that there is no law. And when Lukashenka said “Sometimes there is no space for laws” , it was not a metaphor, they live like this. Though not “sometimes”, but all the time.
They oppress former policemen, they don’t let them go, they add new days to their detention time, they scribble new sham. One captain was under a false accusation, that after he left Okrestina detention center he was taking the pictures of the building — But I do not have a phone, he said. “It is alright, the witness will say that you had one”. But I didn’t go out anywhere. “It is alright, the witness will say you did”. They simply do not care about it.
The cell is about 1,6*2*3 m, there is a plank bed, which can be reclined, but they don’t let you do it. They turned off the water on purpose, if someone has a looseness of the bowels and uses the WC, there is no way to flush it. To put it bluntly, to understand it better: go to the bathroom, use the WC, do not flush it, and lie down on the floor right there, you will get an idea of that cell. If you are alone, it is better not to eat at all, so that you don’t have to go use the WC, when there are two of you and you have eaten, the sight becomes very shocking. It is incredibly difficult to get some water.
Before the court used to be just a circus in its essence, but now it became one in its form too. They give you a cell phone, call the policeman all the time, he declines the call ten times in a row.
The colonel told me that that torture chamber was visited by the poet Dmitriy Strotsev, the kickboxing trainer Yuriy Bulat, there is a list who should be imprisoned there. I spent 3 days inside of that cell, but maybe it was my wife who interceded for me or it became publicly known,, but the night before being transported to another place I spent in a usual cell, where I met colonel Maslouskiy again, he was detained for another 15 days.
When he saw those conditions in the beginning, he went on hunger strike, but being an elderly person, his blood pressure went up and he was taken to the military hospital, the nurses were wiring him to a drip and crying. The chief of the detention center came for him in person, at first the doctors didn’t let him go, but in 5 or 6 days they took him back to Okrestina again. The colonel hoped they’d put him to a normal cell, but they put him to that concrete cage again.He spent 22 days in total in the tortute chamber.
At 5 a.m. they took us out to be transported to Baranovichi, we stood outside in the yard till noon. Later they kicked us in a paddy wagon, on the way one wagon wheel had exploded, so the riot policemen had to change it. In the evening we were in Baranovichi. I believe that the people there have more humanity left, but they are constantly being oppressed from Minsk.
When one comes to Baranovichi from the torture chamber at Okrestina, one thinks that the conditions there are amazing, and the journalists write about it. Then Minsk instantly calls there and commands to change it all for the worst: take away the mattresses, prohibit to sit on the plank beds. There are many sick people in Baranovichi: this is the most overloaded prison, the building is falling apart, the humidity is very high. I had high temperature of 38 degrees, some people lost their sense of smell, others had fever, but they wouldn’t give us any medicine. Still, there are more adequate people there.
Clearly, I had a chance not to be released. I rated it fifty-fifty, yes I wasn’t imprisoned.n The more you overthink, the worse is to be in the cell.
