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Opposition activists remember Stalinist terror victims

Some 200 opposition activists took part in an annual commemorative march staged in Minsk on Sunday to honor the memory of the victims of the Stalinist terror on the occasion of Dzyady (Remembrance of Ancestors Day).

The march, organized by the Conservative Christian Party (CCP) and sanctioned by the Minsk city and district authorities, ran from Minsk Watch Plant to Kurapaty, a woody place just outside Minsk where up to 200,000 people are believed to have been slain during Stalin’s purges in the 1930s and 1940s.

Participants displayed Belarus’ historically national white-red-white flags and chanted “Zhyve Belarus!” (Long Live Belarus!). Opposition politicians Yury Belenki, Lyavon Barshchewski, Ryhor Kastusyow and Vital Rymashewski, as well as former political prisoner Syarhey Kavalenka were in attendance.

The crowd was accompanied by police officers in plain clothes.

The event ended with a rally at Kurapaty. An address by CCP emigre leader Zyanon Paznyak was read out. In the address, the politician emphasized the importance of the Stalin-era massacre site for the Belarusians’ “national will” and warned that Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s government would continue “lying” about Kurapaty and “building markets and casinos around it.”

Referring to the ongoing construction of a restaurant and entertainment center called Bulbash Hall a hundred meters away from the site, CCP Deputy Chairman Yury Belenki said that a “normal government would not build in such a place entertainment facilities bearing names that insult the Belarusians.” The word "Bulbash" is used mainly in Russia as a derogatory term for Belarusians.

“This is a challenge to us as a nation. We must be united in fighting such actions on the part of the government,” Mr. Belenki said.