Minsk: Unknown Vandals Throw down Cross in Memory of Stalin’s Repressions in Kurapaty

In the morning of 8 October the visitors of the Kurapaty forest at the outskirts of Minsk could see that the cross to Belarus’ martyrs lies on the ground. It is not known who and when threw it down. 

Ihar Vashkevich, who leaves not far from Kurapaty, says that the day before he saw three youths with beer and barbed wire in their hands. ‘I saw the barbed wire like this on the cross, that’s why today in the morning I came here,’ said Vashkevich. 

An activist of the Conservative Christian Party Belarusian People’s Front (CCP BPF) Valery Buival says that in the evening of 7 October the cross was in order. 

‘Clinton’s bench’ has also been thrown down. Valery Buival says that the people cannot fix it well enough, that’s why such incidents happen regularly. 

The activists of CCP BPF plan to restore the cross before the mourning procession that takes place on 2 November, the day of Dziady, when ancestors are commemorated, every year.