Minsk - Some 2,000 people made a candlelit procession through Minsk yesterday to commemorate tens of thousands of Belarussians who perished in Soviet purges and to protest against government policies.
The march, attended mostly by old people whose relatives were executed as "enemies of the people" by the Soviet secret police from the 1930s to early 1950s, coincided with the traditional day of remembrance for ancestors, Dzyady. The protesters carried candles, crucifixes and nationalist red-and-white banners from the centre of the capital to the Kuropaty memorial in a wood on its eastern outskirts.