Yury Rubtsou: Police officers say directly to leave country

The political prisoner says about police outrage and calls on Belarusians to express solidarity with Aliaksandr Alesin.

Political prisoner Yury Rubtsou from Homel said it to charter97.org, commenting on an interview with politician Vital Rymasheuski, who raises the alarm over the arrest of military observer Aliaksandr Alesin and explains the current events with “warmer relations” with Belarus demonstrated by the West.

“The situation in the country is getting worse day by day. Both the economy and the human rights situation are deteriorating. The country's economy cannot but worsen not least because our economic system is Utopian. If you ask me to be more precise, I can say that Lukashenka understands the economic situation in the country rather well. He knows the truth despite the fraudulent statistics. But he cannot, or to be more precise, doesn't want to change the direction of the economic development. He gains profit from these frauds, when people get only 10% of what they have earned and 90% goes to the budget to feed the army of law-enforcers, the army of judges and the army of government officials. In other words, it is the choice of the authorities to kill the economy for prosecutors and law-enforcement officers to have a better life. Self-proclaimed tsar Lukashenka is on the top of this system,” the political prisoner says.

He writes that law-enforcement officers say directly that activists should leave the country and comments on the promise to create unbearable conditions in prisons for drug dealers and, probably, for political prisoners. The trend can be noticed by those who pay close attention to political news, he says.

“Those monitoring political news probably paid attention to words of many political prisoners. Law-enforcement officers tell them directly that they should leave the country. I also heard it. Lukashenka proposed recently to create unbearable confinement conditions for drug dealers. Do you believe that only drug dealers will face unbearable conditions? I don't. Even those who are held in temporary detention facilities before trial for five days suffer from unbearable conditions. A person is not convicted yet, but he is already held in inhumane conditions. Even those who spent 10 or 15 years in prison say it's better to be in prison than in a temporary detention facility,” he says.

Yury Rubtsou is concerned about a low level of awareness and involvement of Belarusians into discussions about political news. Such discussions show unity even if it is demonstrated only on the Internet.

“Visitors of the website Charter'97 began to leave few comments to political news, especially to those about arrests of activists. This is what the regime wants to achieve! Let's try to figure out if the arrests are legal. I can share my own experience: policemen do not introduce themselves, they often point a wrong place of the detention in police reports and mention the people who did not take part in the detention. You are not allowed to make a phone call from a police station to tell your family where you are. You ask to call a lawyer, but they make a report saying that you refuse to give evidence. During my latest arrest, I asked to give my glasses to read the report, but they made a new report for refusal to sign the report. When the reports are made, police officers can choose not to send you to a detention facility but leave at the police station without water, food and opportunities to use a toilet. Police officers can beat you and say that you were beaten before the arrest. You won't have any proofs,” the political prisoner warns.

“Documents show that we don't have independent courts in the country. For example, Lukashenka appoints and dismiss judges. Courts depend on Lukashenka that violates article 60 of the Constitution, which says that courts must be competent, independent and impartial. Trials behind closed doors are forbidden in Belarus, but it is not fulfilled. The authorities and courts try to hold all trials with a slight hint to politics behind closed doors. I was surprised to hear the words of so called judge Palulekh. My lawyer asked him if the trial was behind closed doors, and he answered that it wasn't, but he just ordered not to let people in the courtroom,” Rubtsou says.

Yury Rubtsou reminds people that responsibility for the political situation in the country lies not only on the government and opposition, but also on all of us.

“I'd like to tell readers of Charter'97 what the regime doesn't say. Citizens of our country live rather poorly, to put it mildly. The regime cannot improve our life not because it doesn't want, but because it will fail. How to preserve power in this case? Through repression, TV reports about the war in Ukraine and stricter confinement conditions. The authorities want people to compare their life with worse conditions and praise themselves for preventing these bad conditions,” he said.