Clinton’s Bench in Kurapaty Defiled Again :: Charter'97 :: News

In Kurapaty, a wooded area on the North-Eastern outskirts of Minsk, a place of mass entombment, another act of vandalism has been committed by the unknown. A so-called Clinton bench, a memorial sign installed in Kurapaty by the US president Bill Clinton during his visit to Belarus in 1994, was overturned. Flowers and candles were scattered.

In an interview to the BelaPAN Ihar Kuznyatsou, a well-known researcher of the Stalin-era repressions, historian, noted that another desecration of the memorial sign is a result of law-enforcing agencies’ failure to take measures for protection of the place, which in 1993 was included into the State List of Historical and Cultural Valuables of Belarus as “a place of mass executions of political repressions’ victims in 1930-40ies”. “If the police was unable to detect and arrest any of criminals who desecrated the memorial complex, they must organize a round-the-clock vigil in Kurapaty,” the historian believes.

As we have informed, in summer 2001 the bench was broken by unknown vandals. After that it was restored and erected again on Jaunary 15m 2002 by American Ambassador to Belarus Michael Kozak. A sculptor Ales Shaternik, who restored the memorial sign, places a metal wreath in the pace of a crack in the granite platform, which symbolizes repentance of the Belarusians who hadn’t been able to protect the monument from defilement.

Later Clinton’s bench was attacked many times, and in the end of 2005 as well. Then vandals toppled the bench and daubed it with red paint. On December 6, 2005 after protests of the civil society Minsk police department initiated a criminal probe on vandalism. However, in the end of this year the case was suspended. Persons responsible for the crime haven’t been found. Another vandalistic attack happened this spring. The metal garland on the monument was stolen.