Heritage activists apply for permission to demonstrate against trench-digging in World War One cemet

“Although high-ranking officials of the culture ministry have assured the public that the permit for trench-digging in the area has been revoked, this assurance was false,” Anton Astapovich, chairman of the Belarusian Voluntary Society for Historic and Cultural Heritage Protection, told BelaPAN.

The scientific supervisor of the site, which is on the government’s list of historic and cultural heritage, is under pressure to allow the excavation work to continue, Mr. Astapovich said. “He refuses to agree to this illegal act, but the threat of violation still hangs over this sacred place,” Mr. Astapovich noted.

The demonstration is intended to draw the attention of the public and the government to the problem and call for the construction of a memorial in the area, Mr. Astapovich said.

Excavation work started there on the morning of May 30. Construction workers dug human bones out of the ground, put them into plastic bags and took them away in an unknown direction.
According to Mr. Astapovich, the work was suspended later that day after the Society phoned the defense attaché at the Russian embassy in Minsk who promptly made an inquiry with the Security Council of Belarus, which ordered a suspension of the work.

The Belarusian Voluntary Society for Historic and Cultural Heritage Protection learned that a permit for trench-digging in the area was issued by the culture ministry on May 26.
On June 3, the organization appealed to the Belarusian governmental agencies and the Ukrainian and Russian ambassadors over the matter.

The cemetery in question was established in 1914 by a City Duma decision to bury the Russian Empire`s Orthodox Christian servicemen killed in World War I. A wooden church was built at the cemetery a year later. More than 5,000 people, mostly Russian soldiers who died in Minsk hospitals were buried there, mainly in common graves, according to Mr. Astapovich.

The church was destroyed in the 1930s, but the graveyard itself survived. The bodies of WWII Russian POWs were buried there by the Nazis.

The cemetery was turned into an animal market after the war. After the market, called Starazhowski Rynak, was pulled down in the 1990s, the remaining asphalted area received the status of a protected heritage item and was entered in a government register. In late 2002, the culture ministry authorized extensive excavation work at the site. As a result, about 150 square meters of graves was destroyed.

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