Commemoration ceremony held at Kurapaty Stalin-era massacre site

A commemoration ceremony on Tuesday was held at Kurapaty, a Stalin-era massacre site just outside Minsk, on April 29 to honor the memory of the victims of the Stalinist terror.

Taking part were young opposition activists, Stalinist terror survivors and members of the Belarusian Voluntary Society for Historic and Cultural Heritage Protection.

They lightened candles, laid flowers at memorial signs and held a one-minute silence. Residents of Poland's Poznan also participated.

There were policemen at the scene recording the event.

On the eve of the ceremony traditionally held on the 29th day of every month, the site was again attacked by vandals who broke down several crosses.

Thousands of people are believed to have been executed and buried by the NKVD (Soviet police) in the Kurapaty forest in the 1930s and the beginning of the 1940s.

Police do not patrol the area despite repeated requests by commemoration activists. The site itself is on the list of government-protected areas, but memorial signs, which have been installed there by the public, are not.

Uladzimir Ramanowski, an activist of the Belarusian heritage protection society, blamed the "connivance of the authorities" for repeated vandal attacks on Kurapaty.

He said that instead of clamping down on such offenses, government officials themselves "afforded to commit illegal and immoral acts," citing the removal of a memorial cross put up by commemoration activists in the village of Drazhna in the Minsk region and a jail term imposed on activist Vyachaslaw Siwchyk over his participation in the event.

Local residents were massacred by Soviet anti-Nazi guerillas in the village in the Staryya Darohi district during World War II.

Mr. Ramanowski said that he was surprised at the district authorities' failure to commemorate the local residents. "There are quite a lot indifferent officials in the country who do not wish to meet spiritual and ethical demands of society," he said.