BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

02/11/2008

1,000 call for freedom, remember purges in Belarus

The Associated Press

MINSK, Belarus: Hundreds of people marched through Belarus' capital on Sunday to remember the victims of Stalinist purges and call for an end to repression in a country that still has many of the trappings of the former Soviet Union.

Opposition leaders who organized the march of about 1,000 people said the former Soviet republic has not yet turned its back on repression.

Participants carried portraits of purge victims and banners reading "No to repression." They criticized President Alexander Lukashenko's authoritarian government for refusing to acknowledge the scale of Josef Stalin's purges, even denying that mass graves contain the dictator's victims.

Lukashenko has been called "Europe's last dictator" in the West for cracking down on the political opposition. The Belarussian secret police kept the name KGB, the government has arrested opposition leaders and media freedom is highly limited. The country still has collective farms and the economy has seen very little privatization.

"Belarus is once again going through a period of stifling dictatorship, which has its roots in the Stalinist repression," said opposition leader Viktor Ivashkevich.

Police allowed the annual march to proceed peacefully through central Minsk to Kuropaty, a site of Soviet-era mass executions on the outskirts of the capital. Tens of thousands of people were shot there in the late 1930s and early 1940s.

Despite historical evidence to the contrary, Lukashenko's government has insisted the victims were Jews killed by the Nazis during World War II. This has allowed Lukashenko to deny that the victims were Belarusians killed by their own dictatorial Soviet leaders.

"Only by knowing the whole truth can Belarus become a free and democratic country, but the government doesn't want it to be," said Pyotr Shashkel, who as a toddler was sent to Siberia with his parents, who had been declared "enemies of the people." His parents died in a Siberian labor camp.

More than 600,000 Belarusians were killed or sent to labor camps under Stalin, according to historians. Independent estimates of those buried at Kuropaty run as high as 200,000.

The anti-communist movement in Belarus began in Kuropaty in 1988.

Lukashenko has made some efforts in recent months to improve ties with Europe, including freeing political prisoners and allowing the opposition to field candidates in September parliamentary elections. None won a seat.

Source:

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/11/02/europe/EU-Belarus-Opposition.php

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