Kurapaty: Owners of ‘restaurant on bones’ seek to open criminal case against protesters
The owners of Let’s Go And Eat restaurant reportedly demand a criminal case be launched against defenders of Kurapaty.
Kurapaty, a place on the outskirts of Minsk, is not just the national memorial and a mass grave of the victims of Stalinist repression; since 1993, it has been is a site of historical and cultural heritage. According to historians, 100,000 – 250,000 persons might have been killed there.
“We only know that the police are running a check-up. Then they may send the results to investigating authorities, so that they could decide to open a criminal case or not. The people [restaurant-keepers] who got into Kurapaty and seized part of the protective zone, who violate all laws and ethics rules, are demanding to punish those who have made a stand for the memory [of the executed],” Pavel Sevyarynets, a co-chairman of the Belarusian Christian Democracy party, told belsat.eu.
Apart from Sevyarynets, Hanna Shaputska, Dzyanis Urbanovich and Zmitser Dashkevich have been summoned as ‘participants in the criminal action’.
The activists are going to countersue the owners of the restaurant.
The group is protesting against ‘dancing on the bones’, i.e.the activity of Let’s Go And Eat in the vicinity of the mass grave under the passive eye of the local authorities. According to the protesters, its construction and opening at the very place was illegal. Activists first asked the authorities to interfere with the situation, and then decided to act independently. They are trying not to let cars to the territory of the restaurant. Since early June, the police have drawn dozens of protocols against activists who had blocked the restaurant that opened at the site of the massacre.
As reported earlier, on October 28, an authorized event took place in Minsk. About 200 persons gathered at the Luch factory and marched to Kurapaty. The participants were set not only to honour the memory of the executed, but also to draw public attention to the issue of a restaurant working in the protective zone. Today, October 29, is the unofficial day of remembrance of the Soviet repression in Belarus.
