Natallia Papkova: Authorities’ Tortures Only Made Me More Decisive

• 16.05.2017, 14:59

A woman who was sick in chicken pox was placed in the same cell with the Brest activist in the Akrestsin Street detention center.

Activist of the steering committee of the Belarusian Social Democratic party “People’s Assembly” and the “Young Belarus” youth organization Natallia Papkova has told this in a comment for the Charter97.org, speaking about the confinement conditions in the Akrestsin Street detention center.

- The conditions are horrible – intimidation, threats, mud, mould on the walls, total antisanitary. Plus, they kept me in a cell with homeless people, and a woman sick in chicken pox.

The food wasn’t the best either. They fed us with overcooked macaroni, watery potatoes, cutlets made of bread smelling of meat and fishbones.

The soup was water with some potatoes with no trace of smell of meat or boullion.

- Did it affect your determination?

- It did, but it only made it worse for the authorities. Of course I intend to continue the struggle! A month of total tortures from the authorities, on aggregate: first they put me in a mental hospital, then detention, another detention and now they arrest me – it doesn’t come without consequences. As they say, if it doesn’t kill you, it only makes you stronger.

Yes, I intend to struggle further on!