The Survivor of the “Cup” Cell

Illustrative photo

Legal qualification:

• Article 7(1)(e) of the Rome Statute: unlawful deprivation of liberty.

• Article 7(1)(f): torture.

• Article 7(1)(k): other inhumane acts (conditions of detention, use of chlorine).

S.D. was a 24-year-old software engineer at a Minsk IT company. He was the kind of person usually described as “apolitical”. He never voted, believing elections were meaningless, and never joined any movements. On the evening of August 9, 2020, he ran out of milk. He went to a shop just 500 meters from his home on Dzerzhinsky Avenue. He wore jeans, a hoodie, and a backpack with his laptop — he had just finished his remote shift.

The atmosphere in the city was tense. Shouts and bangs echoed from the courtyards, but S.D. assumed he would get to the shop quickly and return. When he left the shop, two masked men in civilian clothes jumped out of an unmarked black van.“Where are you going, you f…?” — the only thing he heard before they knocked him to the ground and started kicking him. The milk and bread fell on the asphalt. He was dragged into the van, where three other men already lay face down.

He was taken to the Frunzenski District Police Department. There he and dozens of others were forced to kneel in the inner courtyard, facing the wall, arms raised. Those who lowered their arms were beaten with batons. “They kept calling us ‘zmagars’ and ‘junkies’,” S.D. recalled. “They demanded the password to my phone. I refused. Then one of them stepped on my hand with his boot. I screamed in pain and told them.”

Near midnight they were transported — already beaten and humiliated — to the Okrestina detention center. “Check-in” was a torture ritual. They were forced to strip naked in the corridor, squat, then run while riot police beat them on their backs and buttocks.

Then began the hell S.D. describes as “descending into Dante”. He was thrown into cell No. 15, a 4-bed cell. When he was pushed inside, 44 people were already there.“We were standing. Just standing, like in a bus at rush hour. It was impossible to sit, let alone lie down. People moaned. The heat was unbearable, concrete walls were wet from sweat and condensation. There was a toilet in the corner, but it was impossible to reach it. People had to relieve themselves where they stood.”

The first 24 hours passed like this. No food. No water. Sleeping while standing, leaning on each other. By the second day, some began hallucinating.

“At night,” S.D. told human rights defenders, “we heard the ‘feeding hatch’ open. We thought they would give us water. Instead, a stream of something sharp and suffocating poured in. It was chlorine. They poured a concentrated solution directly onto the floor. Breathing became impossible. My mucous membranes burned instantly, my eyes felt torn apart, I started choking and coughing blood. People banged on the door, screaming ‘Help!’. We heard laughter behind the door: ‘Disinfection, you scum! Hope you all die!’”

After three days S.D. was pulled from the cell. He could barely stand — his legs were swollen and blue. In a small office a laptop screen lit up with a woman’s face. A “Skype trial”. The judge barely looked at him and read the protocol claiming that S.D. had “participated in an unauthorized protest, shouted slogans, and waved his arms.”“Do you plead guilty?”“I was going to the shop…” he whispered.“Fifteen days,” she replied indifferently.

He spent four more days in Okrestina before being dumped outside, half-conscious — the cell was needed for new detainees. In hospital he was diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury, chemical burns of the airways, multiple hematomas, and two broken ribs.

Six months later, fearing a criminal case already against himself, he fled Belarus illegally.“I still sleep with the lights on,” he admitted. “And when I smell chlorine in a swimming pool, I start to panic. They didn’t just want to punish us. They wanted to break us, crush us, show that we are not human.”

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