Akrestsina street detention center to be repaired by 2014

They started reconstruction of the Center for Isolation of Law-breakers in the Akrestsina Street in Minsk. It is good that no restoration is actually planned, as the confinement conditions there were far from ideal, not as prescribed by legislation. Maybe there wouldn't be so much attention to this event if civil activists, opposition members and journalists did not get there for administrative arrests so often. 

Activist Pavel Vinahradau was released after an administrative detention on September 30, the day before they started reconstruction works. 

"They planned a great moving on the day of my release. They talked about it since long ago. I asked the chief of the detention center and he told me they were about to start reconstruction".

The repair works officially started on October 1. Euroradio has found out that they are to be completed by June 2014, after the Ice Hockey World Cup.

There are builders working at the second floor of the detention center at the moment. They are going to remove the rough plasterwork from the walls, replace the toilets and build plank beds instead of the wooden "stage". The builders promise cells of high comfort. The building will also be repaired from the outside - they will replace walls plaster and windows.

At present, administrative detainees are kept in the neighbouring building - the pre-trial detention center for criminal offenders, says HR defender Nasta Lojka.

"As far as I know, they received the second and the fourth floor. I don't know why so much. I know that the confinement conditions there are much better, but they have a very poor work schedule. It is not always easy to pass a parcel and it is often a problem for a lawyer to get in to see their clients".

Aleh Korban was detained after the anti-propaganda on TV flash-mob and was sentenced to 5 days of administrative arrest. He served punishment already in the pre-trial detention center. 

"When they were already about to release me, they asked: how do you like our conditions? You see, it is indeed better here? Do you like our place better?"

Aleh confesses that the conditions are indeed a bit better. However, the attitude is the same, there is a 20-minutes walk twice a term, and a shower - 15 minutes, once a term. It is impossible to tell whether it is raining or the sun is shining when you look through the window. The cells are big, there are plank beds instead of the "stage", they give out a mattress, a blanket, a pillow, linen and a piece of soap. There was nothing of this in the Akrestsina Street detention center.

"They gave a small piece of soap, and a pile of newspapers to use them as toilet paper - Soviet Byelorussia, a coloured newspaper, cut in equal pieces. Every newbie received this set. However, they imprison people regardless of their physical and moral state. They put two people sick in tuberculosis into my cell, one of them had a severe cough".

Criminal offenders are kept in the pre-trial detention center, while administrative detainees - in the old building of the Center for Isolation of Law-breakers. The first might kill someone, the latter could get there for swearing in public or organizing a flash-mob action.