Opposition leader demands justice for victims on anniversary of 1999 disappearance

September 16, Pozirk. Belarusian opposition leader Śviatłana Cichanoŭskaja has commemorated the 25th anniversary of the disappearance of Belarusian politician Viktar Hančar and his associate, businessman Anatol Krasoŭski.

Both were “kidnapped and murdered by the dictator’s death squads,” she said on X. “Their bodies were never recovered. The regime must be held accountable for all its crimes during three decades of dictatorship.”

The high-profile 1999 political kidnappings were not investigated in Belarus and did not feature prominently during the subsequent presidential elections, in which Alaksandar Łukašenka was declared the winner.

The 2001 report by Christos Pourgourides, rapporteur of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights, concluded that “steps were taken at the highest level of the state to actively cover up the true background of the disappearances.” Evidence suggested that “senior officials of the state may themselves be involved in these disappearances,” it said.

In 2019, media reported that exiled Juryj Haraŭski admitted to being a member of a government-run death squad that allegedly abducted and killed Krasoŭski and Hančar in 1999.

On September 28, the district court of the Swiss city of Rorschach, St. Gallen, acquitted him of involvement in the disappearance of former Interior Minister Juryj Zacharanka, businessman Anatol Krasoŭski and opposition politician Viktar Hančar. 

Also read: Haraŭski acquitted, but his trial is a warning to abusers

The trial was important because Belarusian investigators have not established the fact of the abduction and murder. The Belarusian investigators admitted that the opposition figures had vanished, but said they did not know what had happened to them.

Also read: Haraŭski acquitted, but his trial is a warning to abusers