Memorial events are taking place in Minsk on October 29, the unofficial day of remembrance of the Soviet repression in Belarus.
The Night of Executed Poets will start at 20.00 in Kurapaty, a Stalin-era mass grave site on the outskirts of Minsk. Belsat TV will be livestreaming the event.
On the night of 29-30 October 1937, Stalin’s secret police (NKVD) killed more than 130 representatives of Belarusian national elite in the present-day KGB prison. Belarusian poets, writers, scientists were killed one by one. Ten years ago, historians appealed to the leadership of Belarus to make it the day of remembrance of victims of political repressions, but the then KGB chairman turned the appeal down.
According to the organizers, the participants are not going to rally or protest, but honour the memory of the innocent people at one of the places where genocide acts were committed was carried out in Belarus. To stage the event, a crowdfumding campaign was launched. The attenders are expected to read out the poems by the Belarusian authors killed by Stalinists.
