Belarusian riot policemen brutalized us like terrorists…

• 1.03.2010, 16:39

A pensioner from Minsk has told about participation in a peaceful demonstration of opposition on February 14.

A letter by Minsk dweller Nina Bahinskaya has been published by “Narodnaya Volya”:

Having read a report “Love beaten up by truncheons” in “Narodnaya Volya” about celebration” of St. Valentine’s day in Minsk, a thought came into my head once again: my newspaper writes the truth! As usual, I should say. I was at that “celebration” myself, and after that I filed an application to the prosecutor’s office…

I came to look at our young people, and become younger in spirit myself. Everything was pleasing the eye: open, clear faces, flowers, balloons, white costumes of angels, posters with words of love addressed to Belarus.

And suddenly a crowd of riot policemen, quick arrests which have become customary in the streets of Minsk already. But on such a day! Young people were thrown into paddy wagons as firewood. With several women we hurried to defend them, but it was an uneven contest. And I found myself in the paddy wagon, thrown on a teenage girl, and two more persons were thrown over me. The picture of the period of liberalization is worth of a master’s brush!

Accompanied by shouts of people and curses of “law-enforces”, we were taken to the police department of Tsentralny district of Minsk, made stand face top the wall as if we were some terrorists or bandits. (Maybe there no mo bandits left, and law-enforcers have nobody to fight with except participants of the rally on St. Valentine’s Day?”

I won’t write in detail all the sneering and humiliating treatment of people, their honour: these punches, this roaring of two-legged beasts in uniform, who should be respected in a normal country. But only under the condition named by a poet: “My police is guarding me”, which is far from our today’s reality… A policeman unashamedly slipped her hand into my bag and seized the white-red-white flag, which hasn’t been returned to me despite her promises. And how humiliating it was to undergo forcible fingerprinting! I was encircled, my hands were stretched forcibly, my palms smeared black. To a request to give any piece of cloth to wipe my hands, a person in mufti threw a creased white-red-white flag to me: “Here is a rag for you!” And a second one who called himself a colonel though he was in mufti had no scruple to shout at me: “You witch!”

Meanwgile me and dozens of young people were in hell, where a decent official is an oddball.

I have written an application to the prosecutor’s office of Tsentralny district of Minsk about these facts, about sneering and humiliation on that day in relation to people who gathered for the holiday.

I demand to return my write-red-white flag, defend my honour and dignity, as it should be in a civilized country.

Nina Brahinskaya, a pensioner