The world may be captivated by the spectacle of Arab self-determination, but it’s important to remember that dictatorship still wheezes and kicks in Europe, too, in the form of the ex-Soviet satrapy of Belarus. Last December, that country’s dictator, Alexander Lukashenko, held his own sham presidential election which, thanks to his maintenance of a Stalinist terror state, he stood very likely to “win” without the aid of a battery of vote editors. Yet the fact that others dared to challenged him on his own terms was too much an affront to Lukashenko’s sense of humour. So he ordered a crackdown on all pro-democracy demonstrations in Minsk and jailed hundreds of people including the other presidential candidates who have spent the last few months sitting in KGB prisons. Artists and journalist have fared about as well as you’d expect under these circumstances. And in mid-Feburary, the show trials began.
In today’s Independent, Sir Tom Stoppard, who has been as tireless in his campaigning for Belarusian liberty as he has been in staging the biographies of other Eastern European and Russian liberals, has an excellent editorial outlining the plight of Lukashenko’s political prisoners:
What is to be done?
To start with, in Europe’s acronymic maze there is something called the OSCE – the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe. It has the right to invoke, by vote, a procedure called the “Moscow mechanism”, by which, amazingly, it can force any European country to accept investigators into malpractice. The Moscow mechanism is a rare recourse, but Belarus seems like an appropriate occasion for it.
Second, and more piquantly, there is the course of launching a private suit in a civil court against Lukashenko personally. There is a group of lawyers who have been examining this possibility for weeks now. It has looked like a long shot (there are issues of national sovereignty) but last week a new factor entered the argument: torture.
Ales Mikhalevich, presidential candidate, arrested, charged and released by the KGB into house arrest, publicly tore up his deal to keep quiet, and described the treatment he had received at the hands of the secret police, including being stripped naked and kept outdoors in sub-zero temperatures.
In the words of one of the lawyers, “torture is a game changer”. European foreign ministers, including our own, seem to need a game changer, too. Is this the moment for their actions to suit their words?
Mikhalevich’s statement can be read in full here. Note that he was coerced into signing an agreement declaring his “collaboration” with the Belarusian KGB as quid pro quo for his release from jail. Tearing up that piece of paper could mean he winds up back in the hands of state sadists again.
In the interest of calling attention to Mikhalevich’s case, and the cases of other Belarusian prisoners of conscience, I’m reproducing below his account of the tortures he experienced.
Now might also be a good time to inquire: What is stopping President Obama from issuing a statement of solidarity with the people of Belarus? When the fraudulent election took place, the best the White House could do was to condemn the “disproportionate” response of the regime in bludgeoning, shooting and detaining its own citizens. Exactly what does the administration believe a “proportionate” response by a Soviet-era dictator is to suppressing popular discontent with the results of a pre-planned and pre-determined vote? And does it not suggest that the United States is now trailing History that even Mikhail Gorbachev has signed a statement of deploring a European gulag before the American president has?
Ah, but the wrinkle here is that December 2010 was also a banner month for Obama in terms of U.S.-Belarus relations. That month, Lukashenko agreed to hand over all his weapons-grade uranium to Russia for proper disposal. Much like Libya in 2004, whose fake-friendly overtures and WMD concessions secured it the naive confidence of a new class of intellectuals, human rights activists western diplomats, Belarus now stands the latest beneficiary of an emerging theme in realpolitik. “Blood for oil” no more. The new game is “lives for half-lives.”
Torture methods
“Amerikanka”
1. On 10 January, the “guards’ guards” – people wearing black masks without identification marks – dragged me out of the cell, handcuffed me and lifted my arms up by handcuffs so as to lower me face down to the concrete floor. They dragged me down a spiral staircase to a basement room. After twisting my arms behind my back as far upwards as they would go, until my joints started cracking, they told me I needed to do everything requested of me. They kept my arms in this position for a long time and pushed them higher and higher until I said I would comply with all requests. The pre-trial detention centre personnel was not seen even in the corridors while this was going on.
2. Systematically, 5-6 times a day, we were taken out “to be searched” – for a body search. During this, we were made to stand naked in a “stretch vice”: our legs were tripped up, forcing them to be stretched almost to a full split. When our legs were tackled, I felt the ligaments breaking, it was difficult to walk after this procedure. We were made to stand naked about one metre away from the wall, the masked people forcing us to lean with our hands against the wall. In a room in which the temperature did not exceed 10°C, we were kept this way for 40 minutes until our hands were getting swollen. Several times I was ordered to put my hands on the wall with my palms facing upwards and to remain standing in this position.
3. During the so-called “body search”, we were all herded into a cold room, stripped off and made to sit down and stand up abruptly – repeatedly several dozen times. Prisoners with weaker health were nearly passing out during this, but it didn’t stop the masked people.
4. At night, the daylamps were not switched off. We were ordered to lay down with our faces under lamps and forbidden to cover our faces with handkerchiefs in order that they could see our faces. My sight started deteriorating as a result. We were ordered to sleep with our faces turned to the spyhole on the door. If we turned in our sleep, they walked in and woke us up, ordering us to lay down as ordered. In practice, this became sleep-deprivation torture.
5. The cell floor was painted with acetone-based paint and we were ordered to remain in this non-ventilated room until the paint had fully dried. They added fresh paint several times.This was carried on continuously for over 40 hours.
6. In the cells, the temperature did not exceed 10°C, and there was virtually no heating. There was black mould on the walls that grew when a small window vent was closed.
We were told that the people in our cell could visit the doctor only on Thursdays (instead of the ability to contact the doctor on demand, as is stated in the prison rules). During blood pressure measurement, the doctor forbade a prisoner to look at the monitor, so that they could not see the values. The doctor noted the person’s medical history in a journal, covering it with a piece of paper. Everyone was pushed out for a walk in the freezing weather, even those who had made a doctor appointment and those without warm clothes.
Defence lawyers were not admitted, although there were plenty of spare rooms: we saw free offices en route to our own interrogations. None of us was given an opportunity to meet with a defence lawyer one-on-one. This was done deliberately, to prevent the prisoners from telling them about the tortures.
The Internal Procedure Rules were taken away from the cells, because the administration was breaching dozens of provisions of this document. The “masked people” warned that we would be “hung by handcuffs” again in the event of complaints.
During the time of active pressure on me, I was led out to the so-called body search 8 times daily.
An Afghani citizen who shared a cell with me and had previously been imprisoned by the Taliban said that in the Taliban prison they did not have have such “modernisation” (pointing to bed linen and bunk beds) but that people were treated far better there.
“Volodarka”, where I was moved to scare me (this is what the masked people in ‘Amerikanka’ told me)
There were 15 people in an 8-place cell that stunk of cigarette smoke. If the shift to sleep was at daytime, we had to choose between sleep and a walk. During the search, all 15 people were led out into a 5m² box room for an hour, where some people fainted. Such searches were carried out every day after my arrival, in order to set my cell mates (who were not political prisoners) against me.