All Souls’ Day in Minsk: Action held in memory of executed by Stalin secret police

A traditional action dedicated to All Souls’ Day (Dzyady) was held in Minsk on Sunday.

The action was organized by the Conservative Christian Party of the Belarusian People’s Front. The city authorities sanctioned holding the rally.[/vc_column_text][vc_images_carousel images=”28758,28779,28783,28791,28795,28799,28848,28844,28840,28836,28832,28827″ img_size=”large”][vc_column_text]At 11:30 several dozen people started marching from Chelyuskinites Park to Kurapaty, a wooded area on the outskirts of Minsk, in which a vast number of people were executed between 1937 and 1941 during the Great Purge by the Soviet secret police, the NKVD.

[/vc_column_text][vc_images_carousel images=”28803,28807,28811,28815,28819,28823,28853,28857,28861″ img_size=”large”][vc_column_text]The rally began at 14.45. It was opened by Valer Buyval, a representative of by the Conservative Christian Party of the Belarusian People’s Front, who delivered a message from the party’s leader Zyanon Pazniak.

The fact that Historian Pazniak’s unveiled the dark past of Kurapaty and further exhumation of the remains in 1988 gave an added momentum to the pro-democracy and pro-independence movement in Belarus in the last years of the USSR.

In 1996, Zyanon Pazniak led the first mass protests against the methods of Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s rule, which later became known as Spring 1996. After a wave of political repression, he emigrated to the West.
[/vc_column_text][vc_images_carousel images=”28899,28903,28907,28911,28915,28919,28923,28927,28931,28935,28939,28943,28947,28963,28959,28955″ img_size=”large”][vc_column_text]The action in Kurapaty attended by several hundred people. During the rally, the riot policemen were watching the participants from a distance.[/vc_column_text][vc_video link=”https://youtu.be/txWqsLhAJi4″][vc_images_carousel images=”28973,28977,28981,28985,28989,28993,28997,29001,28963″ img_size=”large”][vc_column_text]The official part of the event ended at 15:30, but few people left. The people continued to talk, lay flowers and light candles.