Akrestsina cooks: Daily norm―19000 per prisoner. 3 porridges, soup, cutlet.

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"So you are telling that we are bad cooks?" - head of manufacture of the cafe "Valhahrad", located in the south-west of Minsk, asked me on the spot. The kitchen of this cafe is used to cook food for the detainees of the Akrestsina Street detention center. 

I would tell her what I thought about the food in the detention center. However, there would be no report then... So, I took a deep breath and said politely: "Well, how should I know it?" 

"Those people eat better than in sanatoriums!" - the lady assured me. I took a deep breath again.

The cafe "Valhahrad" is located near the food supermarket with the same name, under the housing utilities shop "Sandrik". The cozy hall admits about 40 people. Sometimes even weddings are organized here.

Free people eating

The kitchen is behind this wall. The food for both ordinary visitors and detainees is cooked in the same room. However, by different people.

"We have pork, poultry, fish... We usually make some roulettes or sausages of meat. You decide what to put on it: mushrooms, vegetables, tomatoes, maybe chicken or ham", - they say in the cafe.

They can cook a "Kyiv cutlet" or a chop with cheese in this kitchen. However, the prisoners see none of this. They have porridge with bread, and tea, for breakfast and dinner, and soup and a cutlet with some garnish for lunch.

Within my 15 days of detention, they added sour cabbage to the "menu" once. They also gave us a half of a pickled cucumber on July 3. A real holiday! "We make the menu by ourselves!" - they boast in the cafe.

"They (prisoners - Euroradio) have three meals a day. They have oatmeal in the morning, this is 100%. Lunch - 500 grams of soup, garnish, a fish cutlet. We also cook pork. We fulfill the norm of 19 thousand Belarusian roubles a day. Three porridges, soup and a cutlet", - the head of manufacture continues.

However, they take ... 50 thousand roubles per day for food in the detention center! At least, this is the sum of the invoice that they issued to me.

I spent the first day between the police depatment and the court, I did not have any food in the detention center

Pavel Vinahradau confirms: this money is taken exactly for food. The activist never eats in the detention center due to his convictions, so they don't take any money from him afterwards:

Pavel Vinahradau : "When they first detained me, it was for five days. We decided not to take food as a sign of protest, all our cell. The next time it was 15 days. I wouldn't say it was easy but...it was ok. Then I decided not to break the tradition. Moreover, if you don't eat in the detention center you don't have to pay anything when you are released".

"When you have eaten a cutlet eaten – another day is gone!" - they say at Akrestsina. Sometimes the cutlets were quite eatable. However, there could be bones and pieces of bread in them sometimes.

"No one can possibly like this food. It is horrible!" - Alyaksandr, who has been released recently, shares his opinion. He is not a "political" detainee, his opinion is unbiased. However, I can sign under each word. 

Photo: Bad Timing and Euroradio.