Be bold enough to speak your own language

The individual in the white suit interrogated the female university students: “Who ordered you to assemble here?” “Who brought the materials?” “Who planned it all?” The investigation dragged on, and the girls asked whether they could go to the toilet. The man determined that 19-year-old Vera was the ringleader; he told her to stay, but let the others go. The students moved away calmly, later breaking into a run, escaping through the doors. The man in white demanded that the dean call and order them to return, but only one was persuaded: Angelika. That’s when the people in masks appeared, and an unmarked Geely drove up to the building. The two women were pushed in, and the Chinese-made car moved off through the streets of Minsk. As they drove, the officials, whom the Belarusians call karatiely (‘punishers’), kept asking Vera and Angelika whether they had boyfriends, and joked that they were so pretty but had caused problems for themselves. They were searched only when they got to the police station. Hour after hour passed, and near evening a report was prepared, charging the women with “participation in an illegal mass gathering” (article 23.34 of section 1 of the Administrative Offences Code of the Republic of Belarus). Both signed the statements that had been prepared for them, in the hope that they’d be released, but the policeman ordered them to take out their shoelaces. And the Geely reappeared, this time to take them to the Okrestina detention centre.

“They didn’t open the gate for a long time,” Vera recalls, “until somebody asked: ‘Who are you delivering?’ The driver said: ‘Politicals’.” When they got inside, people shouted at them: “Rubbish!” They were threatened with expulsion from university, and that their parents would be sacked. Later they were shoved into a tiny cell called a stakan (‘drinking glass’). Such a space usually recalls a solidly built phone box and is installed in police vans or courtrooms, though they can also be made of concrete and sheet metal. Angelika couldn’t take it and became hysterical. The chief jailer didn’t care; in fact, he threatened her with a transfer to a psychiatric hospital, though in the end he called a doctor. She gave Angelika Corvalol, a tranquilizer popular in the Soviet Union, and then the women were taken to a three-person cell. At night, more ‘politicals’ joined them: Ksiusha, Sasha and Masha. They consoled each other and joked that they hadn’t yet been charged with the corruption and banditry that the authorities had committed. In the morning they were all taken to court. Outside the building, their classmates were already waiting with a lawyer; even the dean, who earlier had so zealously helped the police, was there. But the judge turned out to be a regime man, and sentenced each of them to a fine of “25 base units”, meaning 675 roubles, the equivalent of £200. The crime detected in Vera and Angelika’s behaviour, which required the intervention of the state apparatus of violence par excellence, had occurred on 1st September 2020 during Knowledge Day. It was said to consist in writing quotes from national classics in the courtyard of the Philology Department of Belarusian State University. Using blue chalk, the students inscribed: Meitse smelasts usyudy golasna kazats pa-svoimu (‘Be bold enough