The regime of Lukashenka is turning to the old Soviet methods of repression. The opposition activist Krystsina Schatsikava was kidnapped on March, 22 in Minsk and then taken to Mahilou, the city in the East of Belarus, where she was held in a psychiatric hospital and was treated with sedative drugs by force.
It all began with a conversation with KGB officers, who insisted that Krystsina shouldn’t go to Minsk to take part in the protests of March, 25. She refused. Then the officers warned her that she could have escaped a much more terrible fortune, if she cooperated.
On March, 22 Krystsina was in Minsk, visiting her friend. As left his house, several people in plain clothes caught her and forced her into a car. As it turned out later, they were taking her to Mahilou.
“There was an attempt to rape me in the car”, Krystsina sais. “I think it was made in order to get me angry, so that I looked like a woman who is not able to control herself”.
The doctor, who received Krystsina in the psychiatric hospital, did not tell her his name. Her demands that she could see her lawyer were in vain. She was tied to a bed and then treated with sedatives. “At first I saw the blood-colored spots, floating before my eyes. Then I couldn’t feel my limbs anymore… You are paralyzed, you can not walk, you are like made of cotton wool, you feel sick, you have no appetite… I haven’t even urinated for four days.”
Krystsina had a talk with security forces again, after her release. They asked her, if she changed her mind. “I said, that if I ever had any doubts, because I was tired or disappointed, then now I’m 200% sure of what I do and can only be thankful to you for giving me this impulse for the further work”.
70 years ago, in 1937, the Soviet secret forces tortured to death Smitsier Zhylunovich, Belarusian politician and writer. It happened in the same psychiatric clinic in Mahilou.
