“There was a person, who was forced to jump and shout ‘I love the riot police’”

Two riot policemen came running up. They had a bright, piercing stare. They started screaming.

I am a citizen of the Republic of Belarus, an adult person. And some guys with crazy, violent eyes run up to me, swear at me and demand something from me. Without any prosecutor's authorization, without any charges. It was a kind of shock to me!

We showed them our phones. In my friend's phone they saw the photos from the previous night near Pushkinskaya metro station. They saw that he was among the protesters, near the barricades. In my phone, there were just neutral pictures taken during the day. We were immediately pulled out of the car and stuffed into a prison van. They started to beat us with truncheons and curse us.

I do not know what a kind of person a judge should be to sentence people to administrative arrest for using obscene language. I know only one thing – those guys were the only ones using these kinds of words. Sometimes people can do it in an unusual, intellectual way: using witty expressions, various euphemisms, emotionally nuanced words. As for those guys, they would just say: “Hey you …, go here, go there, …"

They beat me for about two minutes and then threw me into a partitioned cell called a “stakan”, or “beaker”. There were already three people in it. One of them had a wound on his hand, and was trying to stop the blood using the white-red-white opposition flag, because of which he had been arrested. The second guy had been taken out of his car, and had just been driving somewhere. The third one had simply been riding a bike along the bike lane.

My “beaker” was at the very end of the van, and there was a slot through which and I could see what was going on. The prison van was filling up for two or two and a half hours. They did the same thing: threw a person in, yelled at them and beat them. A man in the neighbouring cell shouted that he suffered from asthma, that he needed medicine. But they did not care.

After two and a half hours, the van was now taking us somewhere. On the way, we were beaten.

Then they shouted, “Arms behind your back! Head down!" and kicked us out of the truck. They took us to a gym, which looked like the ones you see in schools. Later it turned out that it was the gym of the Pervomaisky district police station. They forced us to kneel, with hands behind our necks, head against the floor. We were lined up along the wall.

I tried to look around a little bit, and noticed that almost all the guys in blue trousers with stripes had some kind of a dancing gait, with their hips swinging. Interesting.

I was interrogated at about 12:30 a.m. The procedural norms were not observed: they did not explain why I was detained, and no charges were brought. They just asked me about my name, surname, date of birth, where I lived, nationality. One person said that he was Russian. They started beating him and shouting, “Why did you come here? You want another Khabarovsk here?”, referring to the city in Russia where protests were also taking place.

Another story: a guy said he was an Ossetian. They told him the same thing, but this time recalling the conflict in his republic. I do not know how they get their brains washed, but as far as I can tell such political zombification lessons run through all conflicts. Well, at least they know contemporary history…

I listened to the conversations of the police officers and tried to remember their names. Later, I found them on the Internet, and they look just like regular guys. One of them has recently helped to find a stolen kid's bicycle.

Another nice major used my back instead of a table while he was questioning a guy next to me. He put a paper on my back and wrote down the information. Then he told me to crawl to the side, so that he could continue.

They checked if people had tattoos. Those who had them were badly beaten at once.

There was another guy, a drug addict. They started beating him right away. “We'd better… do it here: you'll kick the bucket anyway!” I cannot cite what they actually said.

They showed us a bag with some white substance in it and shouted: “Whose is this?” Of course, no-one admitted anything. I think they were trying to frame somebody. Later, when I was led to a pile of belongings to pick up my phone, I saw that this bag was in the pile. Anyone could take it.

Then they dragged me out for interrogation. They pushed me into some office and threw me on the floor. There was blood on it. They forced me to stand with my head against the wall. They wrote that I had taken part in the rally. I wrote that I did not agree with the report, because there had been at least three hours left before any rally was scheduled.

After the interrogation, they brought me back to the gym. There I saw a man who had a blood pressure crisis. They poured water on him. He asked for Validol, and was told that Validol was just a mint candy, and it would not help him anyway.

They started checking the phones again. In one of them, they found something and started yelling. “Oh, there you are! We were looking for you!” The guy was pulled out of the gym and beaten along the way. Then they brought him back. He had been beaten very badly. He clearly had concussion, as in the morning he vomited and fainted in the toilet. But he got no medical aid. The doctors took him away only when he was at the detention centre. There was another guy with his arm and leg both badly swollen. He could not kneel, and could not walk. He was also taken to hospital from the detention centre. That is, 24 hours later.

In the morning, they asked, “Who wants to eat?” Of course, everyone was hungry. We hadn't had anything for a whole day already. But they were not going to feed us. It turned out that they asked it just to make fun of us.