Gypsy Romance

Repression against the Roma is merely the classics of the police state.

Beating and police have become almost synonymous here... Belarusians are probably the most beaten nation today.

Dzmitry Rastayeu

The case of the death of Yauhen Patapovich, a traffic policeman from Mahiliou, on May 16 resulted in a chain of events, which received a great public and political response.

The day after the incident, a comment appeared on the website of the Ministry of Internal Affairs: "Police officers will do everything to ensure that those who have committed this cowardly crime are brought to justice. The punishment is to be adequate to the crime committed."

The police started to fulfill this promise in a very weird way. Since the text message received from the dead man's phone indicated the involvement of Roma in the case, the pogroms of Roma settlements in Mahiliou, mass detentions (more than 100 people) and beatings of local residents started immediately. There was also severe pressure on Roma in other regions of the country.

Repression against Roma is merely the classics of the police state. The police behaved like an occupation army in a foreign country (if they kill the military, the entire village population is taken hostage until the perpetrators are extradited).

As you know, the Interior Ministry in Belarus has a political carte blanche for repressive actions against the population. For many years, the police have become accustomed to work without legal and moral constraints. The statement of Interior Minister Ihar Shunevich on May 23 suggests that such actions are not just another local oddity, but have been sanctioned by the MIA leadership. He admitted the fact of detentions, as he put it, of "the diaspora part of our citizens."

In fact, we saw nothing new. This is not the first time the Interior Ministry has used such methods of work. After the explosion on Independence Day in 2008, the law enforcement agencies also rounded up a lot of people. The same thing happened after the terrorist attack in Minsk underground in 2011. When the mass protests of non-parasites began in 2017, a significant number of people were detained in the notorious White Legion case. The standard logic of the police state is as follows: first, to arrest a large number of people to demonstrate to the leadership their diligence and zeal, and then to figure out who is to blame, and then, maybe someone will confess.

But even in the newest Belarusian history, rich in lawlessness, there was no case when mass repressions and xenophobia manifested themselves against people on the basis of their nationality, towards a national minority. The punitive action against the Roma is a clear illustration, an exact indicator that the police state is functioning in Belarus.

It is not known how much time this outrage would have lasted had it not appeared on May 20, as a thunderbolt from a clear sky, the statement of the Investigative Committee that the main version of the traffic police officer's death was suicide.

The fact that the public would not believe in such a version was obvious. This was confirmed by the reaction in social networks. The public's distrust of the authorities in general and law enforcement agencies in particular is very high. As people did not believe in the official version and the court verdict in the case of the terrorist attack in Minsk underground in 2011.

But it's more important that after the Investigative Committee's statement about Y. Patapovich’s suicide, the whole absurdity of the Romani pogroms became clearly visible at once. It resembles the famous joke about the missing pipe of Stalin, who immediately complained to Beria. The pipe was quickly found on the other side of the table. But during this time, Beria has already managed to shoot a few people, and all of them confessed in stealing the pipe. If the Investigative Committee's statement about the suicide had been delayed for a few days, I do not rule out that there would have been confessions of some unlucky fellows. After all, some Roma said after their release from the police that they had signed protocols, not even knowing their content.

But then the events took an even more interesting turn. In the morning on May 23, Interior Minister Ihar Shunevich categorically refused to apologize to the beaten and detained citizens. He said: "I assess the actions of my subordinates in this part as absolutely justified, responding to the circumstances in which the disclosure of this particularly serious crime was carried out. There were grounds and reasons, we worked on a separate group solely on the basis of the evidence received at that time... The minister has neither reasons nor grounds to apologize to the Roma." Moreover, the police department immediately reported that they had found drugs in the hands of the Romani baron.

But the image of the policemen as the righteous men on the state iconostasis did not last long. About five hours later, head of the Lukashenka administration Natallia Kachanava rushed to Mahiliou. She had a meeting with representatives of the local Roma diaspora, attended by the chairman of Mahiliou Regional Executive Committee, Leanid Zayats, as well as other senior officials. It was said that Lukashenka had heard the voice of the people. Here's how BelTA informed about that event: "Natallia Kachanava apologized to the representatives of the local diaspora for the situation, if the facts of incorrect actions had really taken place during the investigation of the circumstances of the case. The administration head also stressed that all complaints and appeals would be investigated."

This is an unprecedented case for Belarus. It's hard to remember the authorities apologizing to a group of offended citizens. And there has never been such a thing as the head of the Lukashenka administration apologizing for the tough actions of the police, actually disavowing the Minister of Internal Affairs.

Has the country really lived to see the boom of democracy? Alas, this is not a sign of the regime's liberalization, nor is it a consequence of the intelligentsia complexes that suddenly struck our power, but a symptom of that Belarus has entered the information age.

Although the Gypsies have been collecting signatures under the appeal to Lukashenka, they have not sent it. According to BelTA, "the reason for the conversation was the complaints voiced in the media about the violations during the inspection activities on the death of traffic police inspector Yauhen Patapovich." Since the state-run media did not say anything about these "violations," it means that the authorities had to respond to the information of independent media, which was picked up, disseminated and unequivocally commented on in social networks. In other words, the agenda of public discussions in the country is being defined not by the BT, but by non-state resources. The Internet is creating a situation of greater transparency, mistakes and flaws of the authorities are becoming more and more visible. Therefore, even the authoritarian authorities have to react to public sentiments and change their behavior, putting the head of the Interior Ministry in a very ambiguous position.

Besides, the repressions against the Roma have ruined the official ideological construct, according to which the Belarusians are the inter-national people, and that Belarus is an island of stability, where, as N. Kachanava states, "inter-ethnic peace and harmony" reigns against the background of the raging national conflicts in the world. Therefore, it was necessary to somehow neutralize the dissonance.

Valeryj Karbalevich, Free News