BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

30/10/2006

RFERL News

BELARUSIANS REMEMBER VICTIMS OF STALINIST TERROR

Several hundred people marched on October 30 from central Minsk to the Kurapaty site of Stalin-era mass executions on the city's outskirts to commemorate Dzyady (Ancestors' Remembrance Day), Belapan and RFE/RL's Belarus Service reported. Although the march was officially authorized, police briefly detained several participants. Some demonstrators carried banners reading: "No To Union With Russia!" and "Union With Russia Means Hunger and Killings!" JM

BELARUSIAN MINISTER DENIES STUDENTS EXPELLED ON POLITICAL GROUNDS

Education Minister Alyaksandr Radzkou said in the Chamber of Representatives, Belarus's lower house, on October 27 that not a single student has been expelled from the country's institutions of higher learning for political reasons, Belapan reported. Radzkou noted that the main reason for the expulsion of students is usually their academic failure. Speaking in the Chamber of Representatives a year ago, Radzkou admitted that he had issued a political directive authorizing the rectors of state-run universities to expel students who participate in political demonstrations (see "RFE/RL Newsline," October 4, 2005). Some 300 Belarusian students are now reportedly studying abroad, mainly in Poland, Lithuania, and Ukraine, because of their expulsion following the March presidential election and opposition protests against the regime of President Alyaksandr Lukashenka. JM

KGB CHIEF SLAMS EU DECISION TO AWARD BELARUSIAN OPPOSITION LEADER

Stsyapan Sukharenka, chief of the State Security Committee (KGB), has denounced as biased the European Parliament's decision to award Belarusian opposition leader Alyaksandr Milinkevich its Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought (see "RFE/RL Newsline," October 27, 2006), Belapan and Reuters reported on October 27. "It is a biased situation and it cannot be described in any other way. As a citizen, not a government official, I am surprised at it. If there are no other people to be awarded the Sakharov prize, Europe has become depleted," Sukharenka told journalists. "The West's interest in Belarus is constant -- they never stop interfering in Belarus's domestic affairs as well as financing the Belarusian opposition," Sukharenka added. Milinkevich reportedly promised to spend the money linked to the prize ($63,000) on assistance to victims of political persecution in Belarus. JM

Source:

http://www.rferl.org/newsline/2006/10/3-cee/cee-301006.asp