Tourists who decide to venture in Eastern Europe better not booze too much. Especially for those who are taking off direction Poland, the Czech Republic or Russia, the real danger is the so-called “sobering-up chamber”. To get yourself into this all but pleasant environment is quite easy.
In fact, in these countries the police can withdraw any real or presumed drunk person – there will be no alcohol test – and lock her up to 48 hours in what is a veritable chamber of horrors. The service is even charged. To receive, for example, coercively a bucket of ice water in the face possibly immobilized in a bed. Extreme cases are not rare.
Like that of a Polish woman without a drop of alcohol in the body as well as diabetic brutally taken from the train station in Warsaw, tied up and beaten for 24 hours. Deprived of her daily doses of insulin as well. Not to mention the numerous suspicious deaths. A practice that has even alarmed the British Foreign Office that in its Travel Trends of 2009 has called this institution the greatest danger to all citizens of His Majesty going East.
What’s more, the European Court of Human Rights has often condemned these nations of unmotivated detention and physical abuse. However, governments do not seem willing to bring into question this instrument that in the name of the quiet public is systematically violating the most the most basic human rights. To be mentioned that this is one of the many “relics” bequeathed by the Communist regime.
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