Tag: arbitrary arrest

New Wave of Police Terror in Minsk

Serge Kharytonau
Facebook
November 16, 2020

Following a major crackdown on civilians on Sunday afternoon, terrorist units of the Belarus “interior ministry” have been kidnapping civilians from residential housing in Minsk for 12+ hours in a row.

Masked interior ministry officers led by the so-called interior minister Ivan Kubrakov have been breaking into private apartments across Minsk since early afternoon with no search warrants, no explanations of their activity, and without identifying themselves or presenting their IDs.

Civilians are being kidnapped on no valid grounds from streets, stores, residential yards, building lobbies, and private apartments.

A de facto curfew with [riot police] checkpoints and passport control has been established across numerous residential areas in the Belarusian capital.

Over 1,100 civilians have been kidnapped or faced arbitrary arrests across Belarus in the last 24 hours, with hundreds subjected to torture in detention centers. Prisons in Minsk are overloaded: numerous convoys of riot police vans transported detainees from Minsk to smaller regional towns this weekend.

Over 100 days, Belarus has turned into a failed state of unprecedented human rights atrocities with no comparable precedents in the last 40 years of European history.

According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, 25,000 people were detained in Belarus over the first 95 days of protests.

The situation in Belarus is turning into a real humanitarian catastrophe as doctors are being arrested on a large scale, with up to 1,900,000 cases of Covid-19 officially acknowledged by the acting authorities since March 2020 in a country of 9.5 million people.

Lukashenko’s regime has to be eliminated. All members of the Belarus interior ministry, military, and acting civil administration involved in the crackdowns must face justice at an International Criminal Tribunal for Belarus.

Thanks to Sasha Razor for the heads-up. Image courtesy of the author. The text has been edited lightly to make it more readable. || TRR

#police #abuse #absurdity (Petersburg Police Abduct Alyona Romanova)

Alyona Romanova. Photo courtesy of Boris Romanov
Alyona Romanova. Photo courtesy of Boris Romanov

Boris Romanov
Facebook
12:15 a.m., December 7, 2016

At 5:00 p.m., on December 6, police detained Alyona Romanova near her home. They have charged her with misdemeanors. Allegedly, Alyona did not carry out the police’s orders and did not obey their instructions to get in their car. Alyona is currently in the 59th police precinct station at 27 Yesenin Street.

The desk sergeant’s telephone is +7 (812) 517 5902.

If you can, please call the desk sergeant and ask how she is feeling.

I was at the precinct an hour ago. I brought her warm clothes and food. She has been put in solitary confinement. There is nothing in her cell: no blanket or pillow. We were not allowed to see each other. She is quite upset, of course.

This is a new tactic on the part of the police. Apparently, as the year comes to an end, they have to turn in reports and fill their quotas of closed cases. So they have already cobbled together one case.

There will be a court hearing on December 7. It might take place at the Vyborg District Court at 3 Santiago de Cuba Street.

I don’t know exactly what time it will take place. The lawyer said that will be decided at nine or ten in the morning.

#police #abuse #absurdity — with Elena Romanova.

Translated by the Russian Reader