31 October 2007
Minsk city authorities ban commemorative ceremony at memorial to Soviet soldiers killed in Afghanistan

The Minsk City Executive Committee has not granted permission for a commemorative ceremony at a memorial to Soviet soldiers killed in Afghanistan.

The application for the rally was filed by Ales Mikhalevich, deputy head of the Belarusian Popular Front, and Alyaksandr Kamarowski, chairman of the National Public Association of Afghan War Disabled Veterans. They wanted to hold the ceremony at the Island of Tears concurrently with an anti-Communist forum scheduled to be held at the Minsk office of the Belarusian Popular Front on November 3 in protest against a coming large-scale meeting of Communists from 60 countries.

“Those killed in Afghanistan also were hostages of the USSR drive for world domination,” Mr. Mikhalevich told BelaPAN.

The ceremony also was aimed at commemorating 2,000 people who were killed in Afghanistan’s Salang tunnel, a crucial military link to the South, after a tanker truck blew up there on November 3, 1982 and the fire engulfed a military convoy.

In the written reply, the city authorities said that the application ran counter to regulations governing mass events, without elaborating. When Mr. Mikhalevich reached the committee by phone he was told that the application had been filed late.

Mr. Mikhalevich told BelaPAN that he was set to complaint to court about the denial. He said that the application had been sent 15 days before the scheduled date of the ceremony as required by regulations.