"Viciebsk Spring" continues the series of publications on conditions of serving administrative arrest in temporary detention facilities. Our next author is independent journalist Kastus Mardzvincau.
For the performance of his professional duties during the March 25 and March 26, Kastus was arrested for 15 days:
On the "days" I was first. And was not ready for that. If I knew beforehand how my work will end as a journalist for shares, I would take the necessary things with me. And so – the jacket in which I was, I was forbidden to bring to the camera. Like, she has a lace inside, and you need to open the lining to pull it out. I said that I do not want to spoil the thing. And so, until he got a sweater in the transfer in a few days, he was cold all the time.
It was cold and then, but not so. I had to sleep in clothes, although I gave out two blankets, because I did not have a jacket with me. Because of the cold, I had to give up walking several times, despite the fact that there was obviously not enough fresh air in the cell.
Walking – while sitting on the 3rd floor, – it was necessary to ask, otherwise none of the guards remembered them. Only at the end of the stay there, before the transfer to the 2 nd floor, the guards themselves have already begun to offer. Sometimes he refused – because of the cold. Already as it turned out on the 2 nd floor, walks became daily. The walk was taken out for the time being. Not into the yard, but on a special platform on the same floor, which was essentially the same camera, in which instead of a window – an open space, covered only with a grille.
In total, he was in three cells: No. 7, No. 9 (3rd floor) and No. 24 (2nd floor, there were twice: the night after detention and until the trial, and then the last, the largest, the length of the imprisonment).
They were transferred from the cell to the cell without explaining the reasons. Although it is clear that the reasons for all the time in them were: on the 7th day after being released from the sitters, repairs began (it was audible how they work there – they moved the same nearby), from the 9th they were transferred that day , As my cellmate there was etraped in LTP – a 60-year-old man who likes to read and solve crossword puzzles. I hoped that immediately from the IVS they would not be taken to forced "treatment", and could leave for Grodno to their son – hope did not come true.
The difference between the 2 nd and 3 rd floors? On the 2nd there is a duty post. Not in the very corridor where the cameras are, but the attendant can hear everything that happens on the floor. And, in general, there are all the bosses. (All ITTs are a three-story building, but on the ground floor another institution is located – the sobering station.) Apparently, therefore, on the second floor, "longitudinal" (so called guards that deal with the sideliers) try to do everything to be "according to the rules" . But in general, complaints about the guards as the 2 nd floor, and the 3rd, I do not have. Mostly normal people who treated the sittel people in a human way.
On the 2 nd floor, among other things, there is a cell that according to my cellmate, serves as a "punishment cell" For "chemists" who have been detained in an open-type correctional institution. There were several nights when the inhabitants of this cell did not allow to sleep all the floor - they knocked all night at the door of the cell, shouted, swore, until the guards "calmed down" them with special means.
In all the cells where we visited, we sat together. And there are cameras and large ones, designed for as many as ten people, but I was not allowed to sit in such.
Camera number 7 – "kopeck piece": two-tier bunks ("shkonka"), a tap with a sink and a toilet of the "Asian" type – a hole in the floor on the pedestal – such closets were popular in public latrines of the Soviet Union, preserved here and there and still . There is no flush tank. Instead, there is a plastic bottle – draw water into it from the tap and wash it off. More this chamber is not equipped with anything – there was no bench, no chairs, no table, no bedside table. There were no personal things to store, except on the floor. The window was covered with iron sheets (it seems, after I left there, metal from the window was removed – this was the repair).
Chamber number 9 – more spacious. It is designed for four people (two bunk "shkonki"), but we sat together. Here was a table and next to it a metal bench, attached to the floor. So there was room for things. Equipped with an old dirty toilet. Instead of a cover on it – cellophane package. It was the only camera in which I could see the natural light – there was a window made up of thick glass blocks through which nothing was visible, but the light was breaking through.
Chamber number 24 – double. Without a window at all: where it should have been – a wall. The toilet is newer, but also without a lid. There is a nightstand for storing things.
The walls of all cells are covered with a "coat" – a special relief concrete cover. It is impossible to disinfect such a wall in principle. The cellmates said that according to modern rules, the "fur coat" was allegedly banned, but in the Viciebsk detention center it was still preserved – as a legacy of Soviet times.
Food. For breakfast, they gave white bread and some porridge on the water with a chop, the main ingredient of which was bread. How the nursemaid joked about the meatballs, we eat bread and bread. For lunch – bread is black, the same cutlet. Porridge. Liquid soup, after which it was very easy to rinse the plate, since there was no fat in it. Grams a hundred chilly tea with sugar. Supper – porridge with tea. Except for lunch and dinner, it was impossible to drink coffee or tea – they did not give boiling water to the sitters.
Very strange was the schedule, according to which the food was distributed. If breakfast was at the normal time – after 9 am, then lunch was late – rarely, when earlier than at 15:00, and dinner, on the contrary, early – somewhere at 17 hours. One day they brought dinner at 4:30 pm, and dinner at five in the evening – a very small break between meals.
I got the transfer. But it happened that with a delay: the transfer, made the day before, could be given only the next morning. Letters and cards came from the will. But, it seems, not all. So, having already left, I found in my mail box a copy of the ruling issued by the regional court in response to my complaint, which indicated that it was sent to two addresses – to my home address, and to the IVS (for delivery to me). The copy that I should have been given in the detention center, I never saw.
I managed to go to the shower only once. It is allowed every seven days, but when I asked on the seventh day of my "day" about him, I was told that, they say, it is now a weekend, there is no disinfectant, so wait until Monday. And next Monday I was already free...
