According to numerous publications citing witnesses and victims of the political suppression of the 2020–2021 Belarusian protests, the events were accompanied by extreme police violence and systematic violations of human rights on all stages of a detention process, including the widespread employment of excessive force and torture, medical assistance denial and rape.
Further reports of the Human Rights Foundation (HRF) and the World Organization Against Torture (OMCT) raised the question of classification of these events as crimes against humanity.
On 1 September 2020, in a statement by the United Nations Human Rights Office, more than 450 documented cases of torture and ill-treatment of detainees were mentioned, including sexual abuse and rape.
Background On 9 August 2020, in the immediate aftermath of the 2020 Belarusian presidential elections, which were considered by the Belarusian opposition to be falsified, massive gatherings of protesters started to be forming in Minsk and other major cities of Belarus. In the following night, the initially peaceful protests turned into a full-scale confrontation between the protesters and the Belarusian security forces, during which more than 3,000 protestors were arrested. The open confrontation continued through the next two days, which led to a total of around 7,000 arrested protestors. On 12 August 2020, the open confrontation stopped, and peaceful protests resumed.
Accounts of victims and witnesses According to the OHCHR, both male and female detainees were subjected to rape and other forms of sexual and gender-based violence. Medical records reviewed by OHCHR indicate lesions and other injuries to the male genitalia associated with forcible twisting and rape. Psychological violence, including threats of rape, was also used against detainees.
According to Maxim Solopov, special correspondent of Meduza, who was detained during the 10 August protest and spent two days at the Okrestina Detention Centre, the detainees were ordered to kneel with their hands behind their heads and put their heads on the ground; then, they were continuously beaten by the staff for hours before being put into the cells. The male detainees were ordered to completely undress while lying on the ground, and, on several occasions, loud explosions were heard by Solopov; he believed these could have been detonations of flash-bang grenades. According to Solopov, the tile floor in the detention centre was completely covered with blood, and screams of the beaten detainees could be heard during all his stay there. Solopov also reported that the cell where he and other detainees stayed (45 people in total) had an area of approximately 8 square meters and lacked proper ventilation. On one occasion, 35 female detainees from the cell next to Solopov's, after they screamed to the staff they were suffocating, had dirty water (left from washing the floor) poured over them and threatened that feces would be thrown over them if the screaming did not stop.
According to a Tut.by publication citing various police violence victims and witnesses, the detainees were repeatedly beaten and humiliated by the police and, on many occasions, were refused medical help even if they had open wounds and traumatic brain injuries. Victims reported that detainees were ordered to do squats and had their legs beaten if they failed to fully comply with the order. One of the detainees had a flash-bang grenade put in his underwear, and the police officers who did it threatened him to pull the safety pin and make it look as if the man died from the detonation of a self-made explosive device, mentioning that they "will not have to answer for that". According to a witness, a person suffering from an asthma attack had a foot put on his throat and threatened to be killed without any negative consequences for the police officers involved. The detainees' smartphones were taken by the police officers, and if the detainees refused to tell the unlocking password, they were severely beaten up until they gave the password. According to a witness, a male detainee was undressed by the police and threatened to be sodomized with a nightstick if he refused to give the unlocking password. Female detainees who attempted to help others by telling the police officers about the grave condition of their inmates were brutally dragged by their hair, had their hair cut, and were threatened to be gang-raped should they persist. Other victims reported that the detainees were repeatedly tortured with tear gas and electrocution and, on some occasions, were used as a furniture while standing on their knees, with their heads on the ground.
In a Tut.by interview with the hospitalized police violence victims, it was reported that some of them had been beaten by eight to ten fully equipped police officers at once, while being ordered to lay down and keep their hands behind their heads. Such beatings could last for hours and were accompanied by humiliating acts such as cutting the detainees' hair and ordering them to eat it. The beaten detainees were constantly asked by the police officers who their coordinators were and who had paid them to attend the protest. Some detainees had their underwear torn apart and had truncheons put closely to their rectal area while being beaten and receiving rape threats. According to one of the former detainees, he was beaten to a point where he could not react to the reality anymore and, after it was noticed by the police officers, he was thrown on the concrete floor and repeatedly spilled with cold water, after which he lost consciousness and woke up in a hospital. The former detainees report they were ordered to say they loved OMON () and were forced to sing the state anthem of Belarus, while the female detainees were constantly threatened with rape. According to one of the former detainees, a detained female medical volunteer was not beaten but was repeatedly insulted by the police officers until she started crying. If "suspicious" items (such as medical gloves, respirators, knives of any size or even barrettes) were found in the detainees' personal belongings, they were beaten even harder, as they were considered by the police to be the "organizers" and "coordinators" of the protest. According to witness' reports, some people arriving at the detention centre showed signs of severe rubber bullet wounds on their heads and necks and had to be quickly transported to the military hospital or, if their condition was critical, to the closest civilian hospital. Meanwhile, some of the OMON officers present there were beating even the severely wounded detainees, while screaming and threatening the doctors who tried to help them. On several occasions, doctors were refused their requests to release the detainees in grave condition. According to one of the former detainees, when he was released from a detention centre and sent to a hospital, the ambulance that transported him had its tires perforated by unknown men in cars with tinted glass.
According to a Tut.by publication citing an anonymous medical worker of the Minsk military hospital, about 60 patients with gunshot wounds were brought to the hospital on 9 and 10 August, several of them requiring assisted ventilation. One of the patients, a 60-year-old man, related that as he was walking through a crowd of protesters, the police arrived and the crowd started to disperse; as he could not run due to his age, he decided to surrender and raised his arms up. Shortly after that, he received a point-blank shot in his torso. The youngest of the hospitalized detainees was a 16-year-old boy in critical condition: the riot police had thrown an unidentified explosive device under his feet, rendering one of his thighs completely shattered. According to the medical worker, many of the patients brought to the military hospital had severe torso and chest penetrating traumas.
According to a Naviny.by journalist, Alyona Shcherbinskaya, who was detained on 10 August and spent three days at the Okrestina detention centre, the female detainees were subjected there to repeated beating and humiliation by the female staff. Shcherbinskaya reports that a staff member by the name Kristina was among the most vicious ones there: she constantly insulted the detained women, forced them to bend forward and punched them in the stomach, forced them do squats naked and, at some point, "took insoles out of detainees' boots". The female detainees experiencing menstruation were ordered by her to throw away their sanitary napkins, which was justified by the "need to make sure there was nothing forbidden underneath". One of the detained women tore apart her coat and gave the cloth pieces to the inmates in need of a sanitary napkin replacement. However, the pieces didn't last for long and soon had to be replaced with toilet paper, which they ran out of shortly afterwards. According to Shcherbinskaya, the female detainees were taken out of their cells a few times per day and were forced to stay in line along the wall with their legs widely spread, and if the legs weren't considered to be spread wide enough by the staff, the women were punched in the groin area, including the ones on their period, which caused their sanitary napkin replacements to fall off. At the time of Shcherbinskaya's trial, which happened right in the detention centre, she was viciously beat up by Kristina after refusing to sign a falsified detention protocol. Also, Shcherbitskaya recalls that at some point she was taken to a corridor with naked men on their knees, foreheads on the wall and their hands tied behind their backs. The corridor was covered with blood, the male detainees were groaning, and the staff were screaming very loudly.
In an interview to Naviny.by, a former Okrestina detainee reported that at some point an extremely violent beating of a woman was heard through a whole night. According to him, some people were dying inside the cells after the violent beatings, while all requests for medical help from their inmates were getting ignored by the Okrestina staff. On rare occasions, when medics were allowed to examine the suffering detainees and asked for permission to transport them to hospitals, they were refused to do so by OMON officers, who said "Let them die". The same applied to the people with diabetes. On several occasions, the detainees' smartphones were taken away and smashed into their heads. The detainees who refused to provide the unlocking passwords, were tortured by tear gas and had their fingers broken until the password was given. According to the former detainee, around 124 people were kept in a 30 square meters cell, which forced them to stay for up to 24 hours, while they were refused any water for 15 hours. He also noted that no inventorization was carried out during detainees' acceptance to the detention centre, which means their personal belongings, including money, could have been stolen. Some detainees were noticed to walk out of Okrestina without their shoes.
According to the staff of the Minsk Clinical Emergency Hospital, most of the hospitalized protesters suffered from gunshot wounds and blast injuries, with the most severe cases involving amputations of the traumatized limbs. The detainees transported to the hospital from the Okrestina detention centre were diagnosed with closed-head injuries, concussions, and severe head and torso bruises. In some cases, severe arm fractures were registered, which, according to the medics, "looked as if they had been made on purpose". Some of the hospitalized male detainees were diagnosed with rectal fractures.