Several young Jews swept up in Belarus crackdown
Ever since disputed election results were announced two weeks ago, hundreds of thousands of people have gathered in the streets of Belarus to call for the end of President Alexander Lukashenko’s 26-year rule.
In response, security forces have arrested thousands of protesters, with hundreds reported injured and nearly half a dozen killed. Reports have emerged of guards conducting beatings, threats and even torture on detainees.
Belarusian Jews say that leaders of the community – which comprises about 20,000 people — have tried to remain neutral, but that several young Jews have been swept up in the crackdown.
Artur Raisky and Albert Kengerli, both alumni of the Reform Jewish youth group Netzer, were picked up last week by authorities and spent days in detention.
According to Raisky, they were not even part of the protests. “We were just walking on the street downtown going to McDonalds and suddenly riot police came up to us and took us to a police bus,” he told the Times of Israel.
Raisky said he experienced no antisemitism in detention, another detainee told a different story. Alexander Fruman, an Israeli national who was born in Minsk but does not today have Belarusian citizenship, reportedly was beaten mercilessly, forced to sing patriotic songs and showered with antisemitic insults. When the police learned he was Israeli, they threatened him with a second circumcision, the Times of Israel reported.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO