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Opposition activists stage commemorative procession to Kurapaty

Some 200 people, mostly opposition activists, took part in a commemorative procession in Minsk on Sunday to honor the memory of the victims of the Stalinist terror on the occasion of Dzyady (Remembrance of Ancestors Day), BelaPAN said.

The march, sanctioned by the city authorities, ran from the Minsk Watch Plant to Kurapaty, a woody place just outside Minsk where up to 200,000 people are believed to have been murdered during Stalin’s purges in the 1930s.

Participants marched displaying Belarus’ historically national white-red-white flags, as well as banners of the Belarusian Christian Democracy party, Andrey Sannikaw’s European Coaliltion group and an opposition youth organization called Malady Front.

They carried new memorial wooden crosses to put them up at Kurapaty, calling out pro-democratic slogans.
Taking part were presidential contenders, including Ryhor Kastusyow, deputy chairman of the Belarusian Popular Front; Mr. Sannikaw; Mikalay Statkevich, chairman of the Narodnaya Hramada Belarusian Social Democratic Party; and Vital Rymashewski, co-chairman of Belarusian Christian Democracy.

At a rally that wrapped up the march at Kurapaty, Yury Belenki, acting chairman of the Conservative Christian Party, suggested holding one minute’s silence to commemorate those killed as a result of an explosion that hit the Pinskdrew woodworking company in the Brest region on Monday.

A commemorative rally was also held in Mahilyow on Sunday to remember victims of the Stalinist terror on the occasion of Dzyady.

A dozen activists of the Belarusian Popular Front, including Mr. Kastusyow, gathered at a cross put up on Dzimitrava Street in commemoration of people killed between the 1930s and 1950s.

“If we keep remembering what happened in those years, there is a hope that the past will never come back,” Mr. Kastusyow said. “Unfortunately, when my nomination group was collecting signatures, I heard, though rarely, Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s supporters saying that they were ready to appeal to arms and kill people opposing the current regime in Belarus and Lukashenka. I am very worried. People did not say such things earlier.”