28 March 2024, Thursday, 16:42
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Uncle Styopa, Chastener and Hostage

93
Uncle Styopa, Chastener and Hostage

Why we don't trust people wearing uniform.

Even the best intentions of a person who has come to work in the Police Department will sooner or later turn into order to disperse demonstrators, beat women, threaten and lie.

Teenager Aliaksandr Kharuta beaten by riot policemen is found guilty of beating riot police. It sounds familiar, doesn't it? There is nothing new for a Belarusian. The guy is sentenced to two years in a penal settlement; it's a good thing that he has not been sent to a juvenile prison. Thanks to humane Belarusian Court for this. And of course, thanks to the Belarusian nature that it has no illimitable Siberian space that is so well built up with camps.

Have you seen Kharuta, by the way? Of course, teenagers differ. There was a time when Mike Tyson and Klitschko brothers were teenagers. And one of them, in theory, could have beaten up a riot policeman. But even if there have been world box champion in the dock being accused of beating up a policeman, people would have said anyway: he is maligned. No one has a piece of confidence in a victim wearing the uniform, as well as in people in the uniform as a whole. The society rejects this large branch, and it will be extremely hard to gain confidence again. Anyway, it is not expected in the near future.

An accident happened in the house I live in. Luda, a person gone missing three years ago, has been found dead: she was found in the Vileika reservoir. The whole city was covered with her portraits three years ago. Everything was possible, but this is too much: as soon as she was found her ex-husband Andrei was arrested. Here are some dialogues of our tenants:

- It is said that Andrei pleaded guilty... Seven people arrested him in our garage.

- When did he plead guilty? While the interrogation? Don't you understand that if you are there they make you plead guilty in Kennedy's murder?

People have no confidence in the police, the Prosecutor's Office, the Investigative Committee, to say nothing of the KGB. They can make suggestions on their own, as well as to pursue "word-of-mouth" investigation, but if it is done by the law enforcement bodies - sorry, but we know the way you work. We do not believe you! Who is going to believe you after trials with beaten riot policemen and terminator-teenagers, guys? For the Belarusian society credible evidence, objective investigation, a fair trial is the same ridiculous fantasy, as if the Gestapo officers came to a concentration camp to hand out Christmas cookies.

I remember the story that happened to Natallia Radzina before December 19 in Minsk, but after her beating and the smash-up of the office of Charter'97. An acoustic alarm turned on at night in the courtyard. It was four o'clock in the morning; that was a small courtyard, houses with thin walls. The sound was really wild. In a word, an entire residential quarter was waken up with it. 20 minutes later Natallia with a damaged eye called 102. When the police arrived they were surprised: "How loud this acoustic alarm is! Why did no one called the police?.." Because the police being the structure that should preserve peace and order does not exist in Belarus. If you call it because of an acoustic alarm, you may be found guilty in something. Radzina had nothing to lose, but let sleeping dogs lie, the acoustic alarm will switch off as soon as battery dies, you just have to wait for a while.

Uncles Styopa do exist. ("Uncle Styopa - policeman" - is a Soviet cartoon about fair policeman). This is an objective reality - those who goes to work in the police to protect people and fight crime. We mean a riot policeman who died trying to save fallen girls in the Nemiha rush, a patrol officer who gave an artificial respiration to a man in the street until the ambulance arrived, or Vitsebsk warrant officer who saved a schoolboy from being run over. Why there cannot be good policemen if there are more good people than bad ones?

That's the thing that they exist. Even the best intentions of a person who has come to work in the Police Department will sooner or later turn into order to disperse demonstrators, beat women and children, draw up false protocols, present fake witnesses, threaten and lie. And those who wanted to be an Uncle Styopa, now first find themselves hostages of their own choice and then smoothly join the ranks of chasteners. For a while they try to calm down conscience which falls into sleep that knows no breaking that this is professional not bothering to perform the main task, but they soon surrender, mutate and join a standard law enforcement biomass. The biomass increases in number, rejoices and grows plump. And when a man with a chainsaw comes to a shopping mall it takes six minutes from the murder and a call to the police - this is too much.

Each of us might have his own story and not the only one about a good policeman. Who was really helpful. And we remember these stories. But we do not have confidence in people in the uniform anymore. And they even do not try to bring it back. It's professional, you know. Public interests are the only thing that matters. And the fact that they have nothing to do with grass-roots interests, it is not their problem. Should the state worry then, really?

Iryna Khalip, especially for charter97.org

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