Watchdog

In the dead of night, you can hear the muffled screams outside Minsk's Akrestina prison.

Often described as a "house of torture," the facility is just one of many where beatings and abuse of protesters demonstrating against authoritarian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s claim of victory in a disputed August 9 election are alleged to be taking place.

While riot police have shown little reluctance to mete out brutal forms of justice on the streets, many who have spoken of suffering violence at the hands of police say an even worse fate awaited them once they were in custody.

The few images that have emerged from the grounds of police facilities are harrowing.

One video posted on social media appeared to show bodies lying motionless in a police courtyard, leading to speculation that they were dead.

Another, broadcast by state television, showed young demonstrators, obviously under duress and some bruised and beaten, lined up against a wall vowing never to dabble in making "revolutions" again.

Nikita Telizhenko, a Russian journalist for the media outlet Znak who was caught up in the violence against demonstrators, described his experience in custody to Current Time, the Russian-language network led by RFE/RL in cooperation with VOA.

Telizhenko, who was eventually released from custody after the Russian Embassy in Minsk intervened on his behalf, said from the safety of Smolensk that he was detained after police saw him using his mobile phone to inform his editors of developments in downtown Minsk on August 10, the second night of mass protests.

He said officers who approached him suspected that he was using the popular social-messaging app Telegram to help coordinate the demonstrations. Despite insisting that he did not have the app installed and showing officers the messages he sent to his editor, he was detained and taken to a central police station.

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There, he said, force was used against detainees without exception.

"Any question that was unsuitable to the Belarusian police officers immediately resulted in beatings," he said. "People were screaming, people were soiling themselves from the pain."

Telizhenko, who spent 16 hours at the station, said the violence against detainees was carried out with impunity, and in the presence of other police.

"They relish it. They make people pray when they start beating them," he said. "They beat me on the head, beat me on the legs. One man who was being led in front of me was smashed against the door frame as a joke."

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Telizhenko said detainees were forced to lie face down on the ground and suffered consequences if they tried to sneak a peek at what was going on. Among the around 150 detainees he saw, there were "people with injured spines, broken arms and legs, and concussions, and no one received treatment."

Minsk resident Syarhey Melyanets told RFE/RL's Russian Service that he and his two brothers were detained after they drove to the center of the capital to pray for a peaceful resolution to the violence that at that point had already resulted in thousands of detentions and reported injuries.

He said he was sitting in his car, just sending messages on his phone and not displaying any protest symbols, when they saw a group of 30 to 40 police officers running.

"They pounced on one of my brothers, knocked him down, and began to beat him," Melyanets said. "Then they jerked me out of the car."

He said his phone was taken from him and he was hit with truncheons on the head, stomach, and back. He was dragged to a waiting van and ordered to lie stacked atop other detainees in the van until a larger police van arrived to take them to a police station.

While they waited, Melyanets said, the riot police mocked them and threatened them, with one telling them that if it were up to him, he "would burn you all."

Once in the police van, an officer began to tase him in the back and near his heart.

"I keep telling him that I can’t say anything other than what I’m saying, because it’s true," Melyanets said. "He swore again and again and hit me with a taser several times. In short, he tortured me all the way."

RFE/RL's Belarus Service spoke with people lined up outside Minsk police stations and detention facilities in search of information about missing loved ones.

Even beyond the fence at one facility, people gathered could hear the screams of detainees inside. The crowd called for trucks -- presumably ferrying detainees away to another location -- to stop. Their pleas for information were met with shrugs and smiles from the police.

"How can this be in our country?" asked one woman, who did not provide her name. "How can this be in peacetime, that people are snatched away?"

Lukashenka, the longtime president who election officials claim won more than 80 percent of the vote in an election many Belarusians believe was rigged, publicly wrote off the protesters as malingerers who simply need to "find a job."

"They have nothing to do," he said on national television on August 12. "Therefore, they are wandering the streets and protesting."

Written by Michael Scollon based on reporting by RFE/RL's Belarusian Service, RFE/RL's Russian Service, and Current Time

Documentation obtained by RFE/RL shows that Uzbek authorities have paid more than a half-million dollars to a U.S. public-relations firm to run a campaign aimed at lifting an international boycott against Uzbek cotton over the country's use of forced labor to harvest the crop.

The documentation includes a copy of an agreement between the Washington-based firm Xenophon Strategies and the export agency at Uzbekistan's Ministry of Investment and Foreign Trade.

The agreement was signed on April 14 by the agency's director, Ulugbek Murodov, and Xenophon Strategies CEO David Fuscus.

Tashkent agreed to pay the firm $585,000 for its services, most of which has been already paid.

A global human rights coalition, the Cotton Campaign, launched a boycott campaign in 2006 to force Uzbekistan to end its long-running state-controlled practice of forced labor -- a policy that forces millions of citizens, including children, to pick cotton and meet harvest quotas.

Foreign Lobby Report, a website that exposes attempts by authoritarian states to influence public opinion, reported in early August that Uzbekistan had started a PR campaign aimed at lifting the cotton boycott.

Foreign Lobby Report says Uzbekistan is the first non-U.S. client of Xenophon Strategies.

The agreement obtained by RFE/RL calls for Xenophon Strategies to prepare and implement strategic efforts to persuade the international community that Uzbekistan has abandoned the practice of using forced labor to harvest cotton.

Lynn Schweisfurth, a specialist on corporate social responsibility at the Berlin-based Uzbek Forum for Human Rights, told RFE/RL that Xenophon Strategies was working together with a German company, Cometis, to carry out the public-opinion campaign for Tashkent.

According to Schweisfurth, the U.S. company paid $6,000 to Cometis in May for its cooperation.

When asked by RFE/RL to comment on the contract, officials at the Uzbek export agency directed all questions to the agency's representative, Murod Rahimov.

But when questioned by RFE/RL by telephone on August 12 about the $585,000 contract, Rahimov said, "it is not possible to answer these questions now," and hung up.

A day after the agreement with the U.S. firm was signed, Tashkent publicly urged the Cotton Campaign to call off its international boycott on Uzbek cotton and textiles.

In its request for an end to the boycott, the Uzbek government cited what it claims has been progress in eliminating forced labor -- as well as economic hardships stemming from the coronavirus pandemic.

In response to RFE/RL's reporting about Uzbekistan's lobby effort, the Cotton Campaign said it has been working with the Uzbek government, international apparel brands, and other stakeholders to end forced labor.

"The Cotton Campaign has been working to develop an innovative approach to re-open the Uzbek cotton sector to facilitate responsible sourcing while protecting labor rights and providing brands the assurances they need," Cotton Campaign coordinator Allison Gill told RFE/RL.

"Public relations is beside the point to this work--the government has clearly demonstrated a political commitment to ending forced labor. What remains is the hard work of finishing the reform process and investing in robust, credible means to monitor supply chains, and provide workers access to grievance and remedy," she said.

Since coming to power in 2016, President Shavkat Mirziyoev has gradually introduced laws aimed at eliminating forced labor and child labor.

Mirziyoev has also banned provincial authorities from forcing students and state workers to pick cotton.

In March, Mirziyoev signed a decree abolishing the state's quota system for cotton production.

But nongovernmental organizations, including the Uzbek Forum for Human Rights, say forced labor is still rampant in the cotton sector and that some agricultural reforms closely mimic the previous system.