81 years ago, the Soviet secret police (NKVD) shot down 132 representatives of Belarusian national elite in the present-day KGB prison. On Monday, politicians, activists and concerned Belarusian made a ‘chain of remembrance’ at the KGB headquarters in Minsk.
“25 persons who come to the walls of the secret police that took the ball from the NKVD predecessors and light candles are real heroes,” former political prisoner Mikalai Statkevich believes.
There are only candles and flowers, sadness and pain. No fiery slogans and long speeches will be heard today.
“One day more people will show up here, and they will have other demands. And now we are just showing that we fo remember those people who were shot down here,” Yauhen Afnahel, an activist of European Belarus, said.
Poets Mikhas Charot, Ales Dudar, Mikhas Zaretski, Todor Klyashtarny, Yuly Taubin, writers, teachers, economists, rural intelligentsia – Stalinists executed 132 persons per one night, October 29-30, 1937.
Another remembrance event, the Night Of Executed Poets, started at 20.00 in Kurapaty, a Stalin-era mass execution site. The participants were reading poems by the killed Belarusian authors.
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. No wonder- the authorities’ stance on the issue of repression does not seem to have changed.
Meanwhile, the Belarusian officials are celebrating the 100th anniversary of Komsomol (oficially the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League), which is considered to be a training centre for NKVDists and informants.
- All Souls’ Day in Minsk: March in memory of Stalinists’ victims in Kurapaty (photos, video)
- Terror night for Belarusian culture: Victims remembrance still unofficial
- Kurapaty: Owners of ‘restaurant on bones’ seek to open criminal case against protesters
Photos by belsat.eu
