Belarus registers inhumane treatment of peaceful protesters, prisoners in EU, America

Peaceful protesters and prisoners have been treated in an inhumane manner in a number of countries of the European Union and America, reads the report the Belarusian Foreign Ministry has prepared to highlight the most notorious human rights violations in certain countries in 2013. The report was presented on 10 February, BelTA has learned.

For instance, prisoners kept in Guantanamo, USA have staged a five-month hunger strike against their detention in custody without any time limits while some of them have not been given notice of formal charges filed against them. The prisoners on the hunger strike, who were in a critical condition, were force-fed in order to be kept alive, with the prison personnel treating them brutally. Apart from that, the prisoners have said that the prison personnel had used tear gas and rubber bullets in response to the prisoners’ attempts to interfere with the video surveillance systems in their cells.

The inhumane treatment of prisoners has been registered in Europe. For instance, in 2013 it was revealed that in 2012 prisoners were tortured by the crime section of the police department in a city in Poland. The torture resulted in a forcible suicide. The police abused three suspects apprehended for a theft from a jewelry store. The suspects confessed guilty thanks to the "effective" interrogation on the day they were apprehended.

In a pretrial investigation ward of the Federal Justice Ministry of Austria a 14-year-old teenager apprehended as a suspect for a petty offence (an attempt to steal a mobile phone) was put in the same cell with three adult men where the teenager was sexually abused by the inmates.

It is remarkable that in accordance with the poll conducted by the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Human Rights in penitentiary institutions of the Federal Justice Ministry of Austria prisoners and persons under investigation in the Josefstadt and Gerasdorf institutions have said that they had faced systematic threats, racially themed insults, humiliations and provocations as well as physical violence on the part of the personnel. The prisoners and persons under investigation saw no point in complaining about the actions of the personnel in accordance with the official procedure because they assumed that nobody would believe them.

Apart from that, the Belarusian Foreign Ministry quoted facts of brutal handling of protesters and participants of peaceful meetings, their involuntary detention in Belgium, Germany, Greece, Italy, the UK, France, and other European countries as well as Canada. The protesters have faced mounted police, water cannons, tear and pepper gas, telescopic and rubber batons, gas grenades, bulldozers and so on. As a result, many have been injured.