English

Belarusian pro-democratic supporters visit site of Polish president’s crash

A group of Belarusian pro-democratic supporters on August 23 visited the crash site near Russia’s Smolensk where Polish President Lech Kaczynski, his wife and 94 other members of the country’s elite lost their lives this past April, BelaPAN reports.

The activists traveled to the neighboring country on the occasion of European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism to commemorate the Katyn massacre in which some 20,000 Polish nationals, including about 8,000 Polish army officers taken prisoner during the 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland, were executed by the NKVD in the Katyn forest near Smolensk.

At the plane crash site, they held a minute’s silence and laid flowers at a memorial stone surrounded by images of the victims. Lighted candles were arranged in the form of a cross on the ground.

There were heaps of flowers there, along with wood crosses featuring commemorative plates and Polish state emblems.

The trip had been organized by an opposition group called Razam (Together), among other organizations.

Razam leader Vyachaslaw Siwchyk noted that the group could not but visit the crash site to “remember people who wanted to pay tribute to victims of Stalin’s terror but became themselves victims of a dreadful catastrophe.”