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Over 50 opposition activists stage march commemorating Stalin terror victims near Homyel

More than 50 opposition activists defied the Homyel authorities’ decision, staging an unauthorized march from one alleged Stalin-era execution site to another near the city on October 28.

The organizers applied to the city authorities for permission to hold the march earlier this month, but the application was rejected.

The crowd, including members of the United Civic Party, the Belarusian Popular Front, the Belarusian Party of Communists and the unregistered Belarusian Christian Democracy party, as well as human rights groups and other non-governmental organizations, gathered at a site near the Homyel-Chernihiv highway where many people are believed to have been executed by Stalin’s NKVD secret police in the 1930s and 1940s.

Addressing the gathering, Uladzimir Katsora, deputy chairman of the Homyel regional chapter of the United Civic Party, said that the site contained the remains of the “people who were victimized by the inhuman Bolshevist regime.” “We should remember our history to prevent such events from repeating. This is our history, one cannot forget it,” he said.

The crowd marched to another site where the remains of who are believed to be Stalin terror victims were discovered earlier this year.

The site was dug by the 52nd Independent Special Search Battalion that is authorized by the defense ministry's rules to excavate only graves of people killed in World War II.

The remains of 70 people were exhumed. Opposition activists toured nearby villages and talked to local residents who confirmed that NKVD officers had executed people there in the 1930s.
A memorial stone with an inscription saying, “To your martyrs, Belarus” was unveiled at the site after the march.

Two police vehicles escorted the crowd throughout the march. The policemen filmed the entire event on a camera but did not interfere. //BelaPAN