Blogger Beaten and Fined at a Political Protest Action

Віктар Нікіценка на акцыі ў Мінску супраць расійскай вайсковай базы ў Беларусі. Фота ўзята з сайта svaboda.org

Vik­tar Nikit­sen­ka, a blog­ger writ­ing for many inde­pen­dent media, includ­ing the Moscow office of Radio Lib­er­ty, Echo of Moscow and the web­site korrespondent.net, was detained and severe­ly beat­en by police offi­cers on Octo­ber 13 in Min­sk.

The blog­ger came to Inde­pen­dence Square, “to express his posi­tion on the crim­i­nal Lukashen­ka, who has once again seized pow­er in Belarus.” He was accom­pa­nied by two more per­sons. Then the blog­ger asked his friends to take his pic­ture on the back­ground of the Gov­ern­ment House with a home­made poster “Lukashen­ka On Tri­al”.

Sev­er­al men in civil­ian clothes watched the scene, and then one of them, who looked liked a police offi­cer, approached the pro­test­er and asked to see his ID and note­book.

In response, Vik­tar Nikit­sen­ka asked him to show his ID, as well as to give his name and explain why he want­ed to see the blogger’s pass­port. How­ev­er, he refused to answer and walked away.

Half an hour lat­er the pro­test­ers decid­ed to leave the square and head­ed for the metro.

“On the stairs lead­ing to the under­pass, I was grabbed by the arms and dragged down by force. Nat­u­ral­ly, I resist­ed and demand­ed to see their IDs… But I was dragged to the oth­er side of the under­pass, where a white bus was already wait­ing for me… I was insult­ed, I was beat­en, I was intim­i­dat­ed, I was threat­ened with exe­cu­tion. “Poor work­ing!” I told them, as they tried to threat­en me in the white bus on the way to court. “Ear­li­er, you would take me into the woods and killed, and now you only wag your tongues and swear. You are slaves. There will be 300 thou­sand of us. On the square, you will crawl before us.” After these words, the dri­ver walked toward me. “Take off your glass­es,” he said. I calm­ly took off my glass­es. After that there was a blow in the face, and then a few more blows. As he hit me, he kept ask­ing, “Me, slave?», giv­ing me the oppor­tu­ni­ty to respond. I replied hit­ting him in the nose with my head. Then he went wild, clamped my head between his legs and start­ed beat­ing me on the sides and the back, in the kid­neys,” says Vik­tar Nikit­sen­ka.

Plain-clothes offi­cers were aggres­sive and took away all the per­son­al belong­ings, erased all the data from his phone and cam­era. They for­bid to phone, after the blog­ger was brought to the police sta­tion, where he was held for near­ly two hours.

Viktar’s two friends, who went with him to the Inde­pen­dence Square, Ales Papok and Siarhei Taus­toi, were not detained.

On the same day, Octo­ber 13, the blog­ger stood tri­al at the Maskoŭs­ki Dis­trict Court, which even­tu­al­ly sen­tenced him to a fine of 3.6 mln rubles for ille­gal pick­et­ing and 5.4 mln resist­ing arrest and insult­ing the judge.

Pho­tos of the injuries inflict­ed to the blog­ger, from social nets