BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS
DATE:
Jun 28, 2005, 12:36 GMT
Belarus opposition protests murder of ethnic Polish activist
Minsk - A Belarussian opposition group protested the brutal murder of an ethnic Polish political activist, anti-government activists said Tuesday.
The Union of Poles in Belarus (UPB), a group devoted to promoting the rights of ethnic Poles in the former Soviet republic, accused police of refusing to investigate the death of Jusefa Varaksa because she had spoken out against the government in the past.
Relatives found Varaksa, 68, dead in her home in a village outside the capital Minsk last week. She had suffered multiple knife wounds including an apparent attempt to cut out her tongue.
Eyewitnesses at the crime scene said the assailant or assailants broke a window to enter the house. Varaska's valuables were untouched.
Andrei Pachobut, a UPB spokesman, blamed the attack on Belarus' state-controlled television, which two months ago aired a propaganda piece linking UPB officials with millions of dollars of alleged payments from spy agencies of NATO member states.
Authoritarian President Aleksander Lukashenko frequently uses the state media to allege that the United States and its allies are working to undermine his regime.
False reports of western financing to the UPB likely made Varaksa a target for robbers who tortured her to death in trying to locate secret funds that did not exist, Pachobut said.
Police are refusing to open an investigation into the killing, and the Belarus Interior Ministry has rejected a UPB application to march in protest, he added.
The Lukashenko government, assisted by a still-surviving Soviet era security agency (the KGB), represses all but symbolic opposition in Belarus. Intimidation techniques used against anti-government activists include beatings, destruction of property, and persecution of relatives.
The KGB considered the UPB particularly dangerous the Lukashenko's rule because of the group's extensive links with democratic activists in neighbouring Poland, whose government Lukashenko has accused of trying to organize a coup in Belarus.
c dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur
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