News Article: Intellectuals Condemn State Antisemitism in Belarus
" 'We are protesting against vandalism of Belarusian talibs who destroy relics of Jewish and Belarusian people,' the statement reads. According to Karol, the facts of antisemitism in Belarus would be discussed at the Congress of Belarusian Intellectuals, due in Minsk in a month."
Source: Radio Racyja, 24 December 2002
News Article: Vandals Smash Jewish Gravestones in Belarus Cemetery
"These skinheads have set fire to the Jewish centre in Borisov, they attack Jewish girls and boys... The government has not got involved in the conflict," Basin told Reuters. He said in Minsk, neo-fascists had daubed a picture of a gallows on the statue honouring Jews who were brought to a ghetto in Minsk from Hamburg during World War Two.
Attacks on Jews, synagogues, Jewish cemeteries and other Jewish sites increased across Europe in April after Israel launched a military offensive in the West Bank aimed at rooting out Palestinian militants blamed for suicide attacks.
Before the war, there were 400,000 Jews in Belarus, many having settled there because they were banned from living in much of tsarist Russia. Yiddish was declared one of four state languages in a 1920s Soviet-era constitution, but tens of thousands left due to the anti-Semitism of Soviet authorities.
Now about 100,000 remain among the 10 million population of Belarus, sandwiched between Russia, ex-Soviet Ukraine, Poland and Latvia. President Alexander Lukashenko, who promotes a post-Soviet union with Russia, is accused by Western countries of crushing opposition, running roughshod over the independent press, and failing to protect human rights."
Source: News Belarus, July 12, 2002 (republished from Reuters)
News Article: Belarus Officials Incite Anti-Jewish Hatred
"Vladimir Teplitsky declared that the analogous cargo, shipped to a few other Jewish communities, was called religious, rather than humanitarian, and therefore believed tax-exempt."
"At present, there are 28 thousand Jews living on the territory of Belarus, members of 16 religious and 21 non-religious Jewish communities."
Source: Charter 97, April 6, 2001, citing NTV