After days of demonstrations, Belorussian President Alexander Lukashenko sent in security forces to break up the protests and detains hundreds, which were hauled away to prison.
Local media filmed prisons in the Minsk area where cries of reported torture were heard throughout the night.
You can hear screams of the detained in the Akrestina torture house in Minsk, filmed by @euroradio. Residents of the surrounding buildings say those continue through the night. Thousands remain in cells like these across Belarus. This is some Hague Tribunal shit.#FreeBelarus pic.twitter.com/RqaXJyex67
— Maksym Eristavi (@MaximEristavi) August 13, 2020
Emerging from a jail in Minsk with other Belarusians detained in a post-election crackdown, 27-year-old math teacher Yana Bobrovskaya said she never expected to make it out alive, reported The Moscow Times.
âWe thought we would be buried in here,â she said Friday, weeping as she recounted her experience to AFP.
âThey can do anything while you have no rights,â she added.
Some women were threatened with rape, while men spoke of being ordered to strip naked and get down on all fours while officers beat them with truncheons, according to Amnesty International. One man told AFP he was burned with cigarettes, while another said he was given electric shocks and beaten with sticks. Hundreds of anguished friends and relatives were waiting outside the Minsk detention center, and several ambulances arrived to take injured people away, wrote The Moscow Times.