Journalist Lyubou Kaspyarovich released from jail

The jour­nal­ist learned about what hap­pened to the por­tal TUT.BY only a week lat­er from her cell­mates:

“I was told in the evening of May 24. They told me: that’s it, every­thing was closed, every­one was seized. “What, who, with whom?” was spin­ning in my head. I thought I would go crazy with these thoughts. Night and day I ago­nized, then I began to come to my sens­es a lit­tle,” says Lyubou.

Accord­ing to the jour­nal­ist, detainees kept on Akrestsi­na are still held in over­crowd­ed cells. “Tonight was inter­est­ing. By night­fall, there were 17 of us in an eight-bed cell. The new­com­ers who came in were hor­ri­fied, but, in prin­ci­ple, it was not so scary and hor­ri­ble,” recalls the jour­nal­ist.

Lyubou Kasp­yarovich also said that she did not man­age to get a decent night’s sleep these days: “You sleep on the floor. It’s cold. Plus, the inmates in the so-called polit­i­cal cam­eras are wok­en up at two and four in the morn­ing. They call your name; you have to get up or answer.”

She and her cell­mates were not giv­en bed linen. She wasn’t tak­en to the show­er either.

“There was bed linen in the cell across the hall. Through the feed­er, you could see slip­pers and blan­kets. We had bare beds. It was more com­fort­able to sleep on the floor than on them. Walks were three or four thou­sand steps around the cell until you got tired of count­ing. Show­ers are wet wipes and a bot­tle of water,” says Lyubou.

The jour­nal­ist was not giv­en her parcels until she was released from the TDF. So all that the girl had were the things she was detained in. My col­leagues man­aged to give me a par­cel with var­i­ous hygiene prod­ucts through the police depart­ment, but they did not let me through when I entered the TDF. Only a pack of masks was hand­ed over.

On the plus side, Lyubou said many good peo­ple were with her in the cell: “I have nev­er expe­ri­enced such care.”

Regard­ing the deten­tion cen­ter staff, the girl notes that there were times when they vio­lat­ed the com­fort zone. “You come out hands behind your back, roll-call. Then, in the morn­ing, you pour out water with chlo­rine or with­out chlo­rine. It felt like there were dif­fer­ent smells. Then, you clean it all up. In gen­er­al, I was not in that posi­tion, so for me, it was unusu­al,” recalls Lyubou.

Her rel­a­tives and col­leagues were wait­ing for her when she left the deten­tion cen­ter.