Dzyady will held us (Photo, video)

A tradition march to Kurapaty, the place of mass execution of Stalin’s repression victims, was held on the Day of Commemoration of the dead. The rally was permuted by the authorities, but militia banned to bring sound-amplifying equipment to the memorial complex.

Rallies on Dzyady Day are held every year. This is a memorable event, because the first mass anti-soviet demonstration organized by the Belarusian Popular Front was held in Minsk on that day in 1988. Having known about the terrifying truth about Kurapaty, people came to the memorial complex to pay tribute to the memory of thousands of their countrymen, slaughtered there during Stalins’s repressions. It was the first time in decades under the Soviet regime and underground struggle for independence when the Belarusians raised their national white-red-white flag openly.

This year, the demonstration was organized by the Belarusian Popular Front “Revival” and the Conservative Christian Party BPF, led by emigrant Zyanon Paznyak. The demonstrators gathered at 10.30 a.m. near Minsk Watch Plant. Many of them brought flowers to lay them to the memorial crosses, set up by democratic society in Kurapaty.

Heads of CCP BPF Yury Belenki and Syarhei Papkou, BPF leaders Lyavon Barshcheuski, Alyaksei Yanukevich, Vintsuk Vyachorka, coordinator of the civil campaign “European Belarus” Andrei Sannikov, activists of “European Belarus” Zmitser Barodka, Yauhen Afnahel, Paval Yukhnevich, Maksim Vinyarski, leader of “Young Front” Zmitser Dashkevich, co-head of the BCD Party Paval Sevyarynets, chairman of the “For Freedom” movement Alyaksandr Milinkevich and others took part in Dzyady rally.

The demonstrators were slowly walking along Independence Avenue, Kalinouski, Sedykh, Hamrnik, and Mirashnichenka Streets to Kurapaty. The march took three hours. At least a hundred of national white-red-white flags, flags of “European Belarus”, “Young Front”, and BCD Party were waving above a 1000-column. Most demonstrators had small national flags or white-red-white ribbons. The rally attracted much public attention: passers-by stopped, buyers and sellers run out of shops to see what’ going on, cars honked in solidarity.

The demonstrators, leading the column, carried wooden crosses, which were set up in Kurapaty later. Banners “Pay tribute to memory of Kurapaty victims” and “Dzyady” were noticed. “European Belarus” activists carried a poster “NO to political terror” and a huge banner, depicting Joseph Stalin and an NKVD officer shooting in the back of a man’s head; the other side depicts Alyaksandr Lukashenka and a riot militiaman beating a demonstrator with a club. The column was led by leaders of the CCP BPF and daughter of repressed Belarusian poet Todar Klyashtorny Maya Klyashtornaya, who walks to Kurapaty every year in spite of her old age to pay tribute to the memory of victims of Stalin’s repressions.

All the way participants of the rally were escorted by policemen in mufti. Policemen of several districts of Minsk were observing the demonstration. Numerous policemen and secret services men were recording the march. Traffic policemen were following the column as well, as the rally had been allowed by Minsk city executive committee, and they were responsible for keeping order and for unimpeded passage of demonstrator’s according to the authorized route.

Policemen in uniform and in mufti, as well as commanding officers of Interior Affairs department of Minsk city executive committee were already expecting the demonstrators in the memorial site Kurapaty, where demonstrators arrived at 2.30 p.m. though the rally is authorized by Minsk authorities, its organizers haven’t been allowed to bring sound amplifying equipment to the place of the meeting. The leaders of the CCP BPF called actions of policemen illegal.

The Belarusian authorities haven’t still recognized that victims of Stalin regime were murdered in Kurapaty. Moreover, police refuses to guard the memorial site, and acts of vandalism often happen in the memorial site, and nobody is responsible for that.

In Kurapaty participants of the rally laid flowers to the Cross of Suffering and they sang a hymn “Mighty God”. A meeting was held there. Its participants included relatives of the repressed Belarusians, oppositional politicians, historians. An address of Zyanon Paznyak, the leader of the Conservative Christian party Belarusian Popular Front, who was the first who revealed the truth about Kurapaty in 1988, was read. According to different estimations, from 30,000 to 200,000 people were murdered there in the times of Stalin repressions.

“20 years ago, on October 29, 1989, the Cross of Sufferings was erected in memory of our murdered ancestors… In 1937 till June 23, 1941 NKVD slaughterers, Stalin’s Communists, were shooting in the heads of people here every night, and threw them into pits. The cream of Belarusian intelligentsia, writers, poets, artists, scientists, engineers and workers, peasants and Belarusian teachers are buried there. Every night here and all over Belarus black cars were travelling and seizing people. Moscow sent a plan of arrests and murders to Belarus authorities and executioners. People were executed according to a schedule, every month and every quarter. About quarter a million of people were killed in Kurapaty only. And there are many such places like Kurapaty in Belarus.

Over the period of Soviet occupation in Belarus, since 1919 to 1953 (the year of Stalin’s death) Stalinists and promoters of Russification killed more than 2 million Belarusians (disregarding war victims). Enemies of humanity exterminated prosperous farmers, Belarusian nobility, educated people.

It cannot be forgotten until the world exists and Belarus exists. The Soviet occupation of Belarus during Lenin0Stalin period must be recognized as a genocide and pacification of the Belarusian nation.

Today is “Dzyady”, the serene holiday of memory and unity with ancestors’ souls. Today is the day of All Saints, and tomorrow is the day of Prayer for all murdered. Let us light candles in their memory. Let us place the candles under crosses and on the crosses, let us place white flowers there.

Today one shouldn’t laugh, shout. But one shouldn’t complain and cry. Today is the day of eternity, and all of us are equal in the face of eternity. “Dzyady” will help us to feel it. We believe in better brighter days and the free future of Belarus,” the address reads.

In the end of the rally activists of “European Belarus” civil campaign and “Young Front” and “Moladz BNF” distributed leaflets with the call to gather on the Day of Belarusian Solidarity, November 16 on October Square in Minsk at 6 p.m. and demand release of political prisoners.