Belarusians angry about IKEA cooperating with regime
Activist Piotr Markelau / archive
"IKEA should answer for cooperation with Belarusian prisons," Belarusian activist Piotr Markelau told Euroradio. He recently held a rally in a Czech store of IKEA, for which the police brutally detained him.
The reason for the action was Piotr's reaction to a joint investigation by German and French journalists. They wrote that IKEA bought for its stores the things made by the hands of Belarusian prisoners, including political ones.
journalists found a textile company Mogotex among the old partners of the Swedish corporation. It is assumed that it worked with at least four penal colonies in Belarus. For example, political prisoner Tsikhan Klukach served a 10-month sentence in colony No. 15 for participating in the protests. According to human rights activists, in October alone, there were 94 political prisoners "employed."
IKEA assures its customers that it does not use "forced labor" or "prison labor" in its production.
This discrepancy greatly impressed Piotr Markelau, who now lives and studies in Prague.
Piotr Markelau: I knew this was happening before, but I did not understand who sells what Belarusian prisoners do. Our convicts are forced to work practically for free in penal colonies. You can't even buy boots with the wages they are paid.
Also, after reviewing Article 328 in our country since 2018, I learned that about a third of prisoners in Belarus are convicted of non-violent crimes. For example, people smoke a joint, get locked up for eight years, and later work all those years for IKEA. Of course, it made me very angry.
I read the laws to figure out whether I could hold the company legally liable for this. I found out there are initiatives in France, Germany and the Netherlands, but they have not yet taken effect. Companies have been given time to analyze their supply chains and draw conclusions.
But you can't say that IKEA didn't know anything. This is utter nonsense. The fact that a company with billions of dollars in profits cooperates with the prisons is well-known.
I thought that if IKEA can't be held legally accountable for now, its reputation may still be ruined. It's clear that no one wants to wake up in bed or look at a dresser and know that political or other prisoners made them from Belarus.
Euroradio: How did the idea of the action come about, and what did you do?
Piotr Markelau: I was really angry, so there are some flaws in it. For example, I did not have time to write the text and send it to the Czech editorial offices in advance.
I bought paint, masking tape, an axe, a megaphone, and printed flyers with information about IKEA and who it cooperates with. Went to a local store.
There I waited until there were no children on the floor, put up the flyers and cordoned off the performance area with the tape. That way, I wanted to signal that I wasn't a maniac and wouldn't kill anyone.
Afterward, I poured paint on and chopped up two chests of drawers made by Belarusian prisoners with an axe. The other day, I was sent pictures of this furniture, which the store probably still sells.
Using a megaphone, I told them that the corporation uses the work of Belarusian prisoners, that this is unacceptable, and that IKEA should pay for it. I described how they could do it in my letters to IKEA managers and human rights activists.
In my opinion, the mistake can be corrected. Let IKEA no longer sell such furniture and donate money to Belarusian human rights organizations which support Belarusian prisoners. For example - the International Committee for the Investigation of Torture in Belarus, the Human Rights Center "Viasna," and other organizations.
Euroradio: How long did your action last, and how did the store react?
Piotr Markelau: It lasted about 3-4 minutes. Some customers filmed me, and some turned away and walked on. I also saw smiles because someone was listening and understood everything. I also heard one guy come through and say: "We just want to live in peace."
After I finished the action and put down the megaphone, a security guard came up. I raised my hands, and he sprayed me in the face with pepper spray. Right in the eyes. Unnecessarily... He must have been waiting for a moment like that his whole career. It's not often that IKEA security guards have to use force. Not that he had to. He just wanted to and did it.
When I came to, I saw that some man had collected the flyers that I had laid out there. He didn't notice a few, but the police saw them. They came about ten minutes later.
Euroradio: How did the police behave?
Piotr Markelau: They detained me brutally. I still can't move my hands properly. Of course, you could say that I had an axe, it was dangerous, but not in my situation.
The axe I did not threaten anyone with was lying ten meters away from me. On the contrary, during the action, I showed everyone and told them that I wasn't going to kill anyone. When they came, I didn't resist. So my action can't be an excuse for violence because there are principles of necessity and proportionality in detention.
They put me down face down on the floor, handcuffed me from behind and then pulled me with such force that they hurt my hands. They beat me and said they could use force if I resisted, but I couldn't even walk properly with my hands cuffed behind me. There was no need to do this, it was sadism.
Why did they do that? They saw that I was from Belarus. That's it, the Belarusian is a subhuman to them. They can beat him, do anything with him. Basically, I could sue them, but I'm not going to waste my time with the police. The Czech riot police.
By the way, they wrote nonsense on their Twitter, saying I just wanted to draw attention to myself. At the same time, they asked, and I answered that the action aimed to draw attention to the fact that IKEA used slave labor in the Belarusian colonies and to make the company pay for it.
I spent about six hours at the station. They didn't give me any water. When the interpreter came, we talked to the investigator and prepared an explanatory note for the prosecutor, who would decide what to do. I hope they will limit the punishment to a fine.
Muže se sekerou, který demoloval nábytek a pak ho poléval červenou barvou v nákupním domě na Zličíně, před pár okamžiky zadrželi policisté. Nikdo není zraněný a podle všeho se jedná o muže, který chtěl takto na sebe upozornit. #policiepha pic.twitter.com/7qvCyIf9te
— Policie ČR (@PolicieCZ) November 18, 2022
Euroradio: What are you going to do next?
Piotr Markelau: I will continue to write letters and get IKEA to admit its mistake. They've already admitted it somewhere, saying they have not been using services from Belarus since 2021. OK, thank you. It's also good that they stopped. But even ten years before that, Belarus was not free and democratic. Human rights were being violated. They were aware of that. They can say they did not know about it, but it is not true. If it says Made in Belarus, it means made in Belarus.
P.S. As Euroradio later learned, Belarusians from Latvia also organized a protest. They styled the drawings of political prisoners as an IKEA catalog.
