Bela Rusija

The Ministry of Internal Affairs has no information about the detention of the representatives of the Coordination Council, including Kolesnikova, the department told RIA Novosti. Neither, the State Control Committee nor the Investigative Committee are reportedly aware of the detentions.

Twenty years ago, some leading Belarusian opposition politicians disappeared without a trace. In an exclusive interview with DW, a key witness tells how he assisted a special unit in committing abduction and murder.

The Belarusian opposition figure Maria Kolesnikova ripped up her passport in order to avoid being deported from her own country, according to Ukrainian media reports.

On Monday, masked men kidnapped Kolesnikova from the centre of Minsk and drove her away. Two of her opposition colleagues also vanished. The three activists were later driven to the Alexandrovka border with Ukraine in a car that arrived at about 4am on Tuesday.

Kolesnikova refused to cross and deliberately ripped up her passport, according to reports. “When attempting to deport her, she tore her passport and could not be allowed into the territory of Ukraine by border guards,” a source told Interfax-Ukraine agency.

Ukraine’s deputy interior minister, Anton Gerashchenko, posted on Facebook that Kolesnikova had successfully prevented “a forcible expulsion from her native country”.

The activists with her – Anton Rodnenkov and Ivan Kravtsov – are believed to be in Ukraine. The official Belarus Belta news agency said Kolesnikova was pushed out of the car, which went on without her across the Ukraine border. Belarus border guards then appear to have recaptured Kolsenikova. Officials have not confirmed what happened and the events at the border and her whereabouts are unclear.

“Kolesnikova has now been detained. I can’t say concretely where she is, but she has been detained,” Anton Bychokovsky, a Belarus border guard spokesperson told Reuters. “She was detained in accordance with which they [the group] left Belarus.”

MONEY AND POWER
"I will simply not go away". Russian journalists told what Lukashenko was talking about. 

published: September 8, 2020 at 2:04 pm
updated: September 8, 2020 at 2:50 pm

On September 8th at the Independence Palace in Minsk, Alexander Lukashenko gave an interview to Russian media.

The interview was attended by Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of Russia Today TV channel; Anton Vernitsky, correspondent of Channel One; Evgeny Rozhkov, host of the program Vesti on Russia 1 TV channel; Roman Babayan, editor-in-chief of Radio Moscow Speaks, reports the press service of the President of Belarus.

Journalists Evgeny Rozhkov and Roman Babayan announced the topics that they touched upon during the interview.

about the Coordinating Council
- I will not talk to the opposition Coordination Council because I do not know who these people are. They are not the opposition in any way. All they offer is a disaster for Belarus and the Belarusian people. They want to break all our ties with brotherly Russia, they want us to have paid education and medicine. They want all our industrial enterprises to be destroyed and the workers to become unemployed! - Roman Babayan, editor-in-chief of the radio station "Moscow Talks", wrote the words of Lukashenko in his telegram channel.

about the situation with Maria Kolesnikova
- She really wanted to run away, as he said, to Ukraine, because she had an alleged sister there. And he, as a border guard, believes that she was detained correctly," Rozhkov said, RT's telegram channel reports.

about the protest actions
- We asked who was interested in this (in supporting the protest movement in Belarus), whose side, in fact, he was waiting and waiting for the catch. On the one hand, he said, these are external reasons. The Americans are behind everything, as he believes, first of all, and they act through centers in Poland and the Czech Republic. But there are also internal reasons. The second internal reason, he believes, is that two new generations have grown up in Belarus and a small class of "bourgeois" who "want the power" has formed," TASS Rozhkov said.

- Humanly, I am very offended, but I understand that some people who are now protesting simply do not know what our Belarus was like 20 years ago, and some have forgotten it, - continues to quote Lukashenko as head of the radio station.

about the power
- Yes, I may have overdid it a little. Perhaps, I am shown not only from the TV, but from an iron and a kettle. But only I can defend Belarus now," Rozhkov quoted Lukashenko, RBC reported.

Roman Babayan quoted Lukashenko as follows:

- I will simply not go away. I spent a quarter of a century building up Belarus. I'm not just going to leave it all. In addition, if I leave, my supporters will be cut! We are ready to reform the Constitution; after that, I do not rule out early presidential elections.

about appearing with an automatic rifle
- My appearance with an automatic rifle meant only one thing: I did not run away from anywhere and am ready to defend my country to the end.

about the actions of the security forces
- According to him, the OMON people can't be reproached here, because they defended their country from the blitzkrieg and really stood up for the country then. This is his true opinion," RIA "Novosti" reports, quoting Rozhkov Lukashenko. - Well, there was an overstep and he will deal with everyone. He promised us that. Especially with those cases of beatings of journalists, including Russian ones.

about relations with Russia
- We are ready to continue integration with Russia, but first we need all the institutions and already existing projects within the Union State to really work," Babayan writes.

‘That’s why she’s one of our leaders’

Belarusian oppositionist Maria Kolesnikova rips up own passport to avoid being forced abroad

9:06 pm, September 8, 2020Source: Meduza

Ivan Kravtsov, the executive secretary of the Belarusian opposition’s Coordination Council, and Anton Rodnenkov, the group’s press secretary, gave a press conference in Kyiv on Tuesday, where they accused the Belarusian authorities of trying to use them to help expel opposition leader Maria Kolesnikova (Maryia Kalesnikava) from the country.

Kravtsov and Rodnenkov say they were arrested in the courtyard outside Kolesnikova’s apartment building, where they met after she disappeared on the morning of September 7. The two men were then brought to the Financial Investigation Department, where officers allegedly threatened a criminal case against Kravtsov unless he agreed to drive Kolesnikova out of the country in order to “deescalate” the political situation in Belarus. “We had a long conversation and towards the end they said Maria Kolesnikova would be taken across the border. I realized they were trying to get her abroad by force,” Kravtsov told reporters.

Afterward, the authorities deposited Kravtsov and Rodnenkov in a minibus and drove them to the Ukrainian border. Kravtsov’s car was waiting for them in the neutral territory between the two nations’ checkpoints and the men were placed inside the vehicle. Their passports were also in the car. Officers later arrived with Kolesnikova and shoved her into the car, as well. “The moment she was inside and saw her passport there, she immediately grabbed it and tore it into many small pieces. Then she grabbed these pieces and threw them out the window at the unidentified men surrounding the car,” Rodnenkov says.

When the officials realized Kolesnikova wouldn’t be admitted to Ukraine without an intact passport, Kravtsov says they tried to arrest him and Rodnenkov in the neutral zone, but they failed to catch up to his car. Kolesnikova exited the vehicle before they reached the Ukrainian side of the border.

Inside his car, Kravtsov says he also found a coronavirus testkit, plane tickets, and a medical insurance policy for him and Rodnenkov to visit Turkey and the same documents for Kolesnikova to travel to Vienna and then to Munich. He says he believes these items were planted in the car with the intention of photographing them and then reporting their supposed plans to flee abroad.

Asked why he and Kravtsov didn’t rip up their documents like Maria Kolesnikova, Rodnenkov told reporters in Kyiv that they simply lacked her resolve. “She decided on a powerful gesture. That’s why she’s one of the opposition’s leaders and I’m [just] the press secretary,” he said.

Neither Kravtsov nor Rodnenkov say they plan to request political asylum in Ukraine.

Here are the names of the board members of Belarus's Coordination Council, which has been seeking dialogue with Lukashenko's regime. All of them, with the exception of Nobel Prize winner Svetlana Alexievich, are now in jail or exile. https://t.co/FgSSHTViIW

— Lucian Kim (@Lucian_Kim) September 9, 2020

Something the Kremlin may easily interpret as foreign meddling which warrants Russian assistance to an ally. On what legal grounds is she an “elected leader”? It’s like an invitation for Putin. https://t.co/C9PQNsJwkV

— Leonid Ragozin (@leonidragozin) September 10, 2020

Video of Belarusian state TV: https://t.co/7WqPbB5hUW
Video of Tarasov's political advertisement in Moscow:https://t.co/ZM9dHz9gOK

— Sergej Sumlenny (@sumlenny) September 9, 2020

According to his political ad, Tarasov was born in 1984 in Moscow and has lived all his life in Moscow. pic.twitter.com/xwHk0eAB7O

— Sergej Sumlenny (@sumlenny) September 9, 2020

A horrible video has emerged of Lukashenko's goons attacking an Audi in Minsk on 11 August. "At one point my brain switched off, I no longer felt any pain only the hits" - says the driver who was sentenced to 25 days of arrest and fled Belarus as soon as he was released. pic.twitter.com/9azCRWavju

— NEXTA (@nexta_tv) September 10, 2020

Maria Kolesnikova: Security agents threatened to force me out dead or alive

The Belarusian opposition leader who defied an attempt to force her across the border into Ukraine this week was threatened with death if she refused to go. “They said that if I didn’t leave Belarus voluntarily, they’d take me out anyway, alive or in pieces,” Maria Kolesnikova said.

Ms Kolesnikova, one of the opposition troika who contested disputed elections last month and the only one who remains in Belarus, evaded forced deportation on Monday by tearing up her passport and climbing out of a car window after state security officers drove her to the border.

“They also threatened to jail me for up to 25 years,” she said, in a statement given yesterday to her lawyers from a Minsk prison, where she was being interrogated.

In August, residents of Belarus took from bank deposits $624 million in foreign currency, 704.6 million Belarusian rubles. - from transferable deposits and 270.8 million Belarusian rubles. - from time deposits (totaling $389 million). Therefore, the outflow of cash from bank deposits in August exceeded $1 billion. Such data are given in the statistics of the National Bank of the country. 

This is 17.2 times more than in July 2020. - Then about $55.3 million was withdrawn from bank deposits by individuals, 5.5 million Belarusian rubles from transferable deposits and 108.1 million Belarusian rubles from term deposits. ($58.8 million in total).

The [UN] Human Rights Council agreed to a resolution submitted by the European Union to launch closer U.N. monitoring of alleged rights violations in Belarus, despite multiple attempts by Russia to water it down.

Council President Elisabeth Tichy-Fisslberger announced that there were 23 votes in favour, 2 against and 22 abstensions at the 47-member state Geneva forum.

Russia, which does not have a vote as an observer, submitted 17 amendments to the resolution, but all were rejected. The Council gave the office of U.N. rights boss Michelle Bachelet a mandate to closely monitor the situation in Belarus and submit an oral report with recommendations by year-end.

Russian pop stars have teamed up with their fellow artists from Belarus to record a patriotic music video in support of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who has faced unprecedented protests since his disputed re-election last month.

The music video, titled “Artists for Peace – Don’t Give Away Your Loved One,” was uploaded to Belarusian singer Aurora’s YouTube channel Thursday. The song title references Lukashenko’s Aug. 4 campaign address in which he referred to Belarus as a “loved one you don’t give away.”

“Just know that you don’t give away your loved one,” Russian household names Filipp Kirkorov, Nikolai Baskov, Anita Tsoi, Alexander Buinov and others sing in the music video.

“Belarusians, we are a force,” the Russian and Belarusian singers continue amid a mixture of studio shots and aerial footage of wheat fields, marshes and Belarusian Orthodox Church domes.

The video was uploaded with comments disabled, as well as likes and dislikes invisible to viewers.

Kirkorov’s spokesperson later told the Open Media news website that “the artist didn’t perform any songs in Lukashenko’s support.”

Buinov’s representative said he had agreed to record the song in order to collaborate with Kirkorov and Baskov and was unaware that the chorus contained Lukashenko’s quote.

Jonathan Pedneault (Conflict & Crisis researcher at @hrw)
15 Sep, 12 tweets, 4 min read

THREAD - New @hrw report on #Belarus: From August 20 to 29, @TanyaLokshina and I interviewed 27 people arrested following the August 9 election and held in 11 different detention facilities in Minsk, Hrodna and Homel. Here are our findings:

Belarus: Systematic Beatings, Torture of Protesters
https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/09/15/belarus-systematic-beatings-torture-protesters

While a fraction of the 7000+ cases of people arrested, the stories we collected were harrowingly similar. Irrespective of the facilities they were taken to, all recounted being subjected to brutal beatings, abusive detention conditions and prolonged hours in stress positions.

Here’s how the typical journey of a #Belarus detainee unfolded: Police, riot police (OMON), and special forces (Spetznaz) usually picked them up off the streets, in some cases using extreme violence, then beat them in confined spaces in vehicles where they had trouble breathing.

Then they took them to police precincts and other detention facilities where police and OMON kicked, punched, and beat them with truncheons, forced them to stand, kneel, or lie in stress positions for hours, then held them for days in overcrowded cells.

During this period, #Belarus security forces often denied detainees food and water and denied their requests to go to the toilet. All of our interviewees said they saw dozens of others subjected to similar or worse treatment.

Two of the men we met said police shocked them with an electroshock weapon and saw other detainees stunned with similar weapons. Four had bone fractures due to police abuse. One was raped with a truncheon when refusing to provide his cellphone password:

Witness: Tortured in Belarus
When protests flared up across Belarus over the hotly contested August 9 presidential elections, Ales N.
https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/09/15/witness-tortured-belarus

The aim of the abuse appeared to be to punish and humiliate. Most reported that security forces singled out detainees with so-called “atypical” looks, such as men with long or dyed hair, and people with dreadlocks, piercings, or tattoos, for worse treatment and more insults.

Detainees were also often denied medical attention. They said that police and guards confiscated detainees’ medications, frequently ignored calls for medical care.

All of those interviewed said they were denied access to a lawyer. Those taken before a judge said the proceedings lasted only a few minutes and ended with short arrest sentences for administrative offenses.

Police and detention center officials failed to keep track of the thousands of people arrested, and detainees’ family members said they struggled, in many cases for days, to find out where their relatives were or what happened to them.

All said that when released, they had to sign a document promising not to participate in “unsanctioned assemblies,” and were given a written warning of criminal charges if they did.

The abuses we documented are shocking examples of the brutality of Lukashenko’s rule. International monitoring could help prevent more of the same. @UN_HRC and @OSCE should promptly open inquiries.

Sept 19. The way siloviki were grabbing #Belarusian women at today's march in #Minsk. There are numerous reports about paddy wagons' being full of detainees. As of 7:20 am (local time), there are 306 names on the list being made by human rights defenders #Belarus #BelarusProtest https://t.co/6ut2bpXZdo

— Belsat in English (@Belsat_Eng) September 19, 2020

The time difference between these two photos is 30 minutes #Belarus pic.twitter.com/YkQdAENSx4

— Belarus Free Theatre (@BFreeTheatre) September 19, 2020