Viachaslau Siwchyk detained after memorial action in Kurapaty forest

04.06.2008. Tags: detentions, Siwchyk.
Source: Human Rights Alliance.

On 3 June in the evening representative of the democratic movement installed a memorial shield on one of the mass graves where the remains of 62 persons, shot by Stalin’s chastisers in the 1930-ies.

Several dozens of those who came to the forest to commemorate the innocent victims, were attentively watched by the police, headed by Mikhail Hryb, chairman of Minsk district police department, and persons in mufti.

According to the archaeologist Mikola Kryvaltsevich, who had participated in exhumation of the remains in this very grave in July 1988, the well-known Belarusian writers Ales Adamovich and Vasil Bykau were present during the exhumation, too. As the candidate of historical sciences Ihar Kuzniatsou, some scientists are incline to think that earlier there were the remnants of almost two hundred people in the grave, but due to earlier secret exhumations during the Soviet rule a part of the remains disappeared. Some of the victims are women.

The action participants honored the victims with a minute of silence and then lit candles and laid down flowers to the largest of the known graves, where about 400 persons are buried.

After the end of the action, when the people started to disperse, the police tried to detain Yury Belenki, vice-chairman of the Conservative Christian Party Belarusian Popular Front, but he was literally torn out of their hands by his friends. Several minutes later another politician, Viachaslau Siwchyk, was detained.