Volha Nikalaichyk: I Will Fight Till I See Changes Happening

The Center for isolation of law-breakers should be closed forever.

Director, civil activist Volha Nikalaichyk, who regularly participates in protest actions, told the website palitviazni.info about the procedure of sending people to serve administrative detention in Belarus.

For the last time, Volha Nikalaichyk was sentenced to seven days of detention for exhibiting a poster with portraits of political prisoners at the picket. She was accused of participating in an "unauthorized mass event", together with coordinator of the European Belarus civil campaign Maxim Viniarski.

"Usually I get fines, but I was not surprised at the fact that they finally sent to me to the Center for isolation of law-breakers for a detention," - Volha says. - It was unexpected that they detained me quite harshly. They could have done it more quietly.

I was prepared for the arrest, because I participated in several protest actions. Therefore, even from the Center for the Execution of Punishments, they took me to the court and fined for 30 base fees. And when the policemen drove me in the car, I told them: "You intimidated no one anyway, and you will not stop anyone either, because I'm fighting for my rights. And I do not consider myself guilty, I'll fight until I see changes happening."

- You’ve said the detention was rather brutal…

- The law-enforcers came to my place and started banging on the doors and windows very loudly. I saw several plain-clothed men and realized that they came for me. Naturally, I didn’t open the door. The minibus with police seemed to have left, and my friend, the European Belarus activist Leanid Kulakou, came to my place. At this very moment, the law-enforcers stormed into the house.

They rounded me up in the kitchen, and dragged me to the car, outside, so that they nearly tore my clothes. I didn’t manage to grab any of my things. I asked them to let me close the house, switch off the computer and take the stuff in the bag I had already packed, but they didn’t allow. They just threw me in a minibus and drove me to the court, and then – to the Center for isolation of law-breakers.

- Were you surprised by the confinement conditions?

- It was rather cold, it rained at nights. The blanket was stinky, the cellmates were drunk… However, they appeared normal people, one of them was a former figure-skater. She was going to sell metal scraps together with her husband, and the law-enforcers caught her deliberately on the eve of May 9, so that she “would not ruin the city landscape”.

Besides, the lady turned up better educated and more intelligent that many employees of the Center for isolation of law-breakers.

- In a word, the confinement conditions were, to put it mildly, not the best…

- Cold, complete isolation, no opportunity even to have a cup of tea. When I filed a request asking to let my friends pass me some things, they turned it down. In a word, the conditions were such that it sometimes seemed: this is not the Center for isolation of law-breakers, but a cell where prisoners await the death penalty.

By the way, I chilled the kidney there, but they forced me go for walks in a draft, and I had to obey. After all, the rules are such that either everyone goes for a walk, or nobody. Such facts of inhuman treatment of people can not be left unpunished, I will write complaints already to the UN Human Rights Committee. This is the real mockery! Earlier I hoped that, nevertheless, there might be changes for the better, but, as we see, little has changed. In my opinion, the Center for isolation of law-breakers generally needs to be closed. This is already a relic of the past.