Anatoly Tozik, chairman of Belarus' State Control Committee (SCC), introduced the new head of the Brest Region SCC, Mariya Protashchik, to her personnel on October 18.
While replying questions from journalists, Ms. Protashchik said she planned no personnel reshuffle, noting that it would take time to get to know people better. "I have worked in the system since 1994," she said. "I headed the Grodno Region State Control Committee, which those who found support called the committee of justice. I think here it will be the same."
Ms. Protashchik replaced Igor Stoma, who served in the position just over a year and left, reportedly, because of frictions with Vasily Dolgolyov, chairman of the Brest Regional Executive Committee.
Mr. Stoma's predecessor, Konstantin Sinevich, took over the city government in Kobrin after quitting the State Control Committee reportedly for the same reason.
Speaking at the introduction ceremony, Sergei Ashmyanstev of the Brest Regional Executive Committee expressed hope that Ms. Protashchik's appointment put an end to frictions between the regional government and the SCC.
Two senior officials in the Baranovichi district, Brest region, were severely injured by an accidental shell explosion on Saturday.
Sergei Gerushchenko, director of the Baranovichi forestry, sustained multiple wounds as a World War II shell, lurking underground, went off underneath the fire that they made while hunting in their home
area, the Brest regional police department said. His companion, Nikolai Mitilovich, chairman of the Baranovichi District Soviet, suffered less.
The 46-year-old Gerushchenko was reportedly taken to a hospital in Baranovichi with lacerations in his back, buttocks and legs and "an open fracture of his right arm," and the 49-year-old Mitilovich with a
wound in his right wrist.
Road police rounded up 12 illegal migrants from China near Baranovichi, Brest region, on October 16.
The Chinese said that they had come from Moscow and intended to cross the border into Poland. The driver of the minivan, in which they were traveling, stopped some distance away from the road police checkpoint and told his passengers to bypass the police through the forest, but they lost their way and were apprehended. The minivan drove away by that time. The Chinese migrants are kept at a detention center in Brest pending decision on their deportation. The migrants were detained one day before the start of an exercise on fighting illegal migration and trafficking human beings and illicit drugs.
Cash and valuables were stolen from a Polish truck in the Brest region Sunday on and another truck was robbed on Monday, police said.
Some EUR3,300, 300 zlotys, 25,000 rubels and two mobile phones disappeared from a Mercedes truck parked by a Polish driver in the district center of Beryoza on October 12.
The driver confessed that he had left a door open and was absent for seven hours between one p.m. and eight p.m.
Two other drivers told the police next day that four men had robbed their DAF refrigerator truck on Route M1 in the Ivatsevichi district as they stopped to replace a tire. The four arrived in a car and threatening physical violence, locked the drivers up inside the refrigerator
and took $4,400, 600 Russian rubles, EUR120, 130 zlotys and two cellphones from the truck. The police launched an inquiry in both cases.
An official delegation of Belarus' southwestern Brest region led by Eduard Sokolov, deputy chairman of the Brest Regional Executive Committee, left for Sweden on Sunday.
The objective of the seven-day trip is to establish official and economic ties between the Brest region and Sweden. While in Sweden, the members of the delegation are expected to meet with local officials in the province of Kronoberg, the Gnosjo municipal government, Oleg Yarmolovich, the Belarusian ambassador to that country, and visit several manufacturing companies to discuss cooperation.
The delegation includes Nikolai Krivetsky, head of the administration of the Free Economic Zone "Brest," Sergei Razumets, director general of the Brest Electromechanical Factory; Nikolai Schastny, director of the Pinsk-based Kuzlitmash foundry equipment maker; Yury Matveyev of the Alternativa heating, air-conditioning, ventilating and energy saving design and manufacturing company; and Mikhail Belousov of the KOMPO light industry equipment maker.
The idea to send the delegation to Sweden originated with the Belarusian embassy in that country.
Customs officers at the Brest railroad station recently seized a jewel watch valued at 28 million rubels ($13,220) from a Russian man traveling to Germany, said the press office of the State Customs Committee.
According to the press office, the man had indicated some of the foreign cash he was carrying in a customs form, but failed to declare $2,900. The money was reportedly found in a pillow.
A more thorough search revealed a 121-gram Cartier gold watch decorated with 37 diamonds in a factory package concealed in the traveler's suitcase. The man reportedly said that he was carrying the watch to some friends as a gift.
Belarus' Uniate Church marked the 407th anniversary of the Union of Brest-Litovsk on October 6.
The Union of Brest-Litovsk is the 1596 agreement whereby several million Ukrainians and Belarusian Orthodox Christians living under Polish rule in the Grand Duchy of Litva acknowledged the Roman pope as supreme in matters of faith.
Initiated by the Polish Orthodox clergy, the union was based on mutual concessions: the Orthodox Church retained its own liturgy, discipline and rite.
Polish King Zygmunt Waza viewed the union as a way of spiritually uniting lords and clergymen in the Grand Duchy while pursuing Poland's foreign and domestic policy and a means to jointly fight the reformation.
The agreement was met with opposition from part of the Orthodox nobility and clergy.
Pope Clement VIII approved the terms of the union between November 1595 and February 1596. A convocation in Brest on October 6-10, 1596 gave the document its final approval. On October 9, the union was solemnly proclaimed in the St. Nicholas Church, located at the site of the present-day Brest Fortress Memorial. The unified church was named the Uniate or Greek Catholic Church.
Most of the Orthodox Christians population accepted the union, although there were some conflicts. The Uniate Church was outlawed on the Belarusian territory by the Polotsk Church Convocation in 1839, and in Ukraine by Joseph Stalin in 1946.
The Uniate Church revived in Western Belarus in the 1920s, but was dissolved by the Soviet government in 1940. In the early 1990s, a Uniate community emerged in Brest. There is a Uniate church there at present.
Historians have split on the Union of Brest, some calling it a destructive event and some acknowledging Uniatism as Belarus' national faith. Kastus Kalinowski, leader of the anti-Russian uprising of 1863-1864, held the latter view. A source at the St. Peter and Paul Church in Brest told BelaPAN that the local Uniates did not plan to stage any festivities
on the occasion.
There is still no memorial sign on the site of the former St. Nicholas Church. The Uniate community wanted to start excavations on the territory of the Brest Fortress Memorial, but were banned from doing it by the local authorities.
A 76-ton statue of the European bison symbolizing the Brest region has been erected on a hill overlooking the E 30 (M 1) road linking Brest and Minsk. The bison stands near the village of Petkovichi in the
Baranovichi district. It was put up on the order of Vasily Dolgolyov, chairman of the Brest Regional Executive Committee.
European bison, still inhabiting the Belovezhskaya Pushcha national park, is an element of the Brest region's emblem as well.
The statue is 20 meters (66 feet high), 27 meters (89 feet) long and 1.5 meter (five feet) wide. It was designed by the Brestproyekt bureau and built at the Pinsk shipyard within just three weeks. The complete statue was cut in eleven parts, transported onto the top of the hill and then welded back together. Shipyard workers will soon finish painting the statue, using a ton of paint and undercoat.
The Belarusian-language version of Anastasiya of Slutsk will premier at the 4th Belarusian Film Festival due to take place in Brest between October 11 and 16.
The movie was Belarus' largest film production project last year that cost the government around 2 billion rubels and was carried out under the personal supervision of Belarusian leader Aleksandr Lukashenko. It relates a story of the Belarusian duchess who played a key role in defending the town of Slutsk besieged by a 20,000-strong army of Crimean khan Baty-Girei in the 16th century. Mr. Lukashenko wanted it to be "a genuine Belarusian" film exposing the true history, culture and
mentality of the people. However, its genuineness appears to have been questioned at the few international film festivals it has visited so far.
Director Yury Yelkhov told reporters on September 25 he had been reproached at festivals in former Soviet Union republics for making the original movie in Russian rather than in the native language.
The filmmaker said that the state film production studio Belarusfilm has signed on a company in Moscow to add English subtitles to the film in order to promote it at Cannes and other film festivals in Europe.
The film has already grabbed a few awards at minor film festivals in Russia and Ukraine, and, according to Svetlana Zelenkovskaya who starred as Anastasiya, was well-received by the audience and the jury.
Belarusfilm Director Vyacheslav Shenko said the movie is a box office success in Belarus with its audience nearing a total of 300,000. The movie premiered on July 3 in Minsk, all regional capitals and
the city of Nesvizh, which celebrated its 780th anniversary this year.
28 October 2003