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US embassy condemns vandal attack on Kurapaty

 

The US embassy has expressed regret over been a new vandal attack on Kurapaty, the unofficial memorial at a Stalin-era massacre site just outside Minsk.

Unknown people scattered flyers titled, "Stalin was Right!" at the site and defaced the so-called Clinton Bench with spray-paint.

The bench, a monument donated by US President Bill Clinton during his visit to Belarus in 1994, and the flyers featured the "AKM" abbreviation, which stands for "Vanguard of Red Youth," a Bolshevik organization with branches in Belarus, Russia, Ukraine and other post-Soviet countries as well as Finland, Israel and Poland.

"The Clinton Bench is a symbol of the sorrow of the American people at all tragedies that befell Belarus in the past, including the mass murder at Kurapaty," US Charge d'Affaires Ethan Goldrich commented to BelaPAN. "We're sad that someone wants to insult the memory of its victims."

Dzmitry Kudranok, an AKM activist in Minsk, told BelaPAN that neither he, nor his associates were aware of the incident in Kurapaty. However, he did not rule out that "one of the AKM wings" could be behind it.

The site, where tens of thousands of people are believed to have been executed by the NKVD in the 1930s and 1940s, is on the State Historic and Cultural Heritage List.

In the last decade, Kurapaty, which is not patrolled by police, has repeatedly been targeted by vandals, who break down crosses and damage and deface other memorial items, including the Clinton Bench.

In November 2008, criminal charges were brought against two teenagers who had allegedly pulled down several memorial crosses at Kurapaty. In May 2009, the charges against them were dropped as part of an amnesty campaign. The young men were the only people ever charged over vandal attacks on Kurapaty.