BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

27/05/2006

Protests greet tribute to secret-police boss

A monument to Soviet secret-police founder Felix Dzerzhinsky was unveiled Friday in the Belarusian capital Minsk, provoking protests from human-rights defenders and opposition politicians.

Dzerzhinsky helped establish the first Soviet secret service, called the Cheka, in 1917 under Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin. The Cheka, a forerunner of the KGB, was responsible for mass arrests and executions.

The towering 10-foot bronze figure, a copy of the statue of Dzerzhinsky that pro-democracy crowds tore down in front of KGB headquarters in Moscow in 1991, occupies a spot inside the grounds of the Military Academy. Dzerzhinksky was known as "Iron Felix." He was born in modern-day Belarus.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, an open admirer of the Soviet Union and a pariah to the West because of his government's crackdown on dissent and the media, has kept the Soviet-era acronym KGB for Belarus' security service.

Source:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003022298_wdig27.html