Faking Democracy

[Nentsia]

1581

The atmosphere near the university quickly grew tense as the riot troops, the black hordes of the System of Corruption over which President Vynnychuk presided, encircled the demonstrators. Their very presence was a provocation in the eyes of the students. Ihar Litvinchuk and his friends knew this was going to get rough.

Tough guys in plainclothes emerged among the crowd, taking down protest signs and trying to isolate the ring-leaders of the protest. Other protestors tried to protect their buddies and a fist-fight erupted amidst the crowd. Before they knew it, everyone was seemingly fighting with everyone, as plainclothes agents from the police and security ministries had infiltrated the demonstration in large numbers. A police commander shouted. ''The situation has escalated. The Mstsislavsk Police orders you to disperse!''

Ihar protected Yanya from a big guy who almost fell on top of her as he was pushed off a nearby stage by other guys. But Ihar and his friends quickly lost each other in the crowd as the water canons dazzled everyone. Ihar felt the ice-cold water beam pushing his body to the other end of the street, along with several other demonstrators. Police troops slashed their way through the crowd with their police clubs. People were lying on the ground, with blood-covered faces. Others were carried by four or five big men in civilian dress to anonymous minivans that quickly drove away. Ihar got back up on his feet to look for Yanya. ''Yanya?!'' he yelled. But Yanya was nowhere to be seen. When he turned around he saw her being dragged over the street by a policeman. He dragged her by her hair and continuously beat her with his stick. Ihar looked around him for an improvised weapon. What he found were fellow protestors, who, disgusted at the sight how a woman was being treated, jointly stormed at the policeman and Yanya. Ihar and perhaps seven or eight random figures charged at the policeman, who quickly took a run for it and joined his police comrades again. Yanya was freed.

The intensity of the police violence quickly dispersed the crowd, and many demonstrators fled the scene. They were not giving up yet however. The plan was to disperse, regroup, and respawn a new demonstration elsewhere in the city. Ihar and Yanya too fled the scene, without the rest of their group, to their planned meeting spot. But as they ran criss-cross through the alleys and streets, avoiding the open squares and major boulevards, they noticed that there were police checkpoints everywhere. When they approached the meeting place, they saw from a distance that Oleg and Artyom were already there. And there were police officers with them... checking their identity papers. Ihar and Yanya kept their distance and observed the situation. After a while, Oleg and Artyom were guided into a police car, and taken away. ''Shit!'' exclaimed Yanya. Ihar and Yanya turned around, and walked away. They walked away from the city centre, into the residential areas, pretending to be a couple taking a walk.

Yanya and Ihar walked like that for almost an hour, until they arrived at Ihar's parents' house. It was in an ordinary flat apartment building - one of those concrete units of which they had thousands in this city alone. The mixture of mud and melting snow that served as walking-paths in this neighbourhood would make it seem like a very impoverished area, but inside the buildings things were actually quite nice. The residents in this area were doing quite okay. Ihar noticed however that a black minivan was standing in the street, with black windows. He recognized it as a similar one he had seen at the demonstration. ''Move around. We're going to your grandmother. The secret police is here.''

Ihar and Yanya stayed there safely for almost a month, until one day, when Ihar was going to the shop, noticed that a black minivan pulled up next to him. Four guys in civilian dress dragged him off the street, threw him in the van, closed the door, and drove away. Ihar got a bag pulled over his head, his hands were cuffed, and he was beaten. He ended up somewhere in a prison cell where he was kept for several hours. Probably somewhere in the night or early morning, he was taken to another cell for interrogation by agents from the UGB - the Directorate of State Security. Well... interrogation... they read out the accusations against Ihar and asked him if he wanted to confess his crimes. Ihar refused, after which an interrogation followed of maybe 12 hours in which the agents constantly repeated the same questions and the same accusations. Several weeks later, without almost any sleep and with constant intimidations and bullying, Ihar had to appear before a court. He was assigned a lawyer by the state - who didn't even know Ihar's name. The court convicted Ihar to 6 weeks jail and an enormous fine. During his time in prison, Ihar heard that Yanya had received a similar treatment shortly after him.

The media remained silent about these events in Nentsia. The majority was controlled by the government, either directly, or indirectly through cronies of the president. The few remaining independent media in the country had been so systematically undermined and sabotaged in all possible ways that their reach was marginal nowadays, and the few journalists that dared to work there were constantly being harassed and intimidated from all sides. Since the suspicious deaths, ''suicides'', of several major critical journalists in Nentsia in the late 1570's, most of the well-known opposition journalists had fled into exile and operated from other countries. But Vynnychuk's agents haunted them even there. The judiciary, which still might have protected some of the rights of the demonstrators, was in no position to do anything since the pro-Vynnychuk parliament had adopted a series of laws that were so broadly defined that virtually any form of dissent could be seen as an act of ''extremism'' and a violation of the law. Nentsia was a dictatorship of laws. Towards the elections of 1582, president Vynnychuk had usurped more power than ever before. But the more dictatorial powers he accumulated, the more freedom his henchmen experienced in doing as they pleased - for all resistance to them would readily be crushed by their overlord the president. Corruption, self-enrichment, and abuse of power by the police, the bureaucracy, government officials, politicians, befriended businessmen, diplomats and so on took absurd forms. The injustice of such a system fuelled the anger and resentment in society, and the stage was being set for harsh confrontations between the People and the State.