Lukashenka Never Came To Kurapaty

The Lukashenka authorities continue to abuse the memory of the victims of the NKVD.

Former Ambassador of Ukraine to Belarus Roman Bezsmertnyi commented on his Facebook page on the demolition of crosses in Kurapaty by the Belarusian authorities.

– The events in Minsk have prompted me to go through our photo archive. When I was the ambassador of Ukraine in Belarus, I was shocked that there was no memorial and museum at that place. There were a lot of huge wooden crosses, under which there were always fresh flowers. They were brought by Belarusian patriots, representatives of diplomatic missions, relatives of the victims. However, Lukashenka never came there with flowers. I had the feeling that it was a place of the authorities’ neglect to the martyrs of the Belarusian people.

The Kurapaty tract on the outskirts of Minsk is the place of mass graves of victims of Stalinist repressions of 1930-1940. According to various studies, from 7 to 250,000 people rest in peace in the “execution forest.” They are citizens of different countries: Ukraine, Poland, Belarus, Russia, Lithuania and others.

In 2018, they opened the Let's Go Get Some Eats restaurant next to the tract. The other day, Lukashenka assured at the press conference that order would be restored in the tract and that the restaurant wouldn’t be closed.

Some of the crosses on the side of the tract were demolished by excavators without any explanation. The activists who tried to stop the destruction were arrested.

The Lukashenka authorities continue to abuse the memory of the victims of the NKVD. And this is despite the fact that in 1993, Kurapaty were added to the State List of Historical and Cultural Values of the Republic of Belarus, as the burial place of victims of political repressions of the 1930s and 1940s. Such an attitude to memory is a frank proof of an inhuman attitude. The KGB archives are still not opened. And it means that the number of victims and their surnames remain classified, – Roman Bezsmertnyi wrote.