I hope works at Smolensk crash site done "with knowledge and consent of our investigators" - FM
"I hope that construction works at the Smolensk catastrophe site are being conducted with the knowledge and consent of our investigators, and that the works are not excessively interfering with the site or limiting access to it", Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski said Monday.
On Monday, private TV news reporter Tomasz Kulakowski announced on Twitter that access to the Smolensk crash site (see: NOTE 1) was prohibited. He published pictures showing the area fenced off with warning signs declaring building work for a gas pipeline. "At the Smolensk catastrophe site they're 'building' a gas pipeline. (Russia's - PAP) response to the removal of Soviet statues", he wrote on Twitter.
Asked by PAP about the reports, Waszczykowski said he hoped "the work is being done with the knowledge and consent of our prosecutors, who, after all, have still been conducting an investigation into the cause of the catastrophe". "If that (construction - PAP) work radically interferes with the catastrophe site, it could cause further difficulties for the investigation, as it is already being hindered by failure to return the Tupolev wreckage and the lack of cooperation on the part of the Russian side, including the prosecutor as well as the people who were in the control tower (at the time of the disaster - PAP)", Waszczykowski said.
The foreign minister pointed out that the crash site "is a certain tragic symbol for us, it is a place that Polish people have recently travelled to in order to pay tribute to those who died". "I also hope that no works will obstruct the access to the site, where we still look forward to building a monument to the catastrophe's victims", Waszczykowski concluded.
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NOTE 1: On April 10, 2010, President Kaczynski, his wife, the last President of Poland in exile Ryszard Kaczorowski and dozens of senior government officials and military commanders were killed in the air disaster of the Tu-154M plane near Smolensk, western Russia. The delegation was on its way to Katyn to attend events marking the 70th anniversary of the 1940 Katyn Massacre (see: NOTE 2), in which around 22,000 Polish POWs were murdered at the hands of the Soviets.
NOTE 2: The Katyn Massacre was a series of mass executions of Polish POW's, mainly military officers and policemen, carried out by the Soviet security agency NKVD in April and May 1940. The killings took place at several locations but the massacre is named after the Katyn Forest in west Russia, where some of the mass graves of the victims were first discovered.
The massacre was initiated by NKVD chief Lavrentiy Beria, who proposed to execute all captive members of the Polish officer corps. The victim count is estimated at about 22,000. The executions took place in Katyn Forest, the Kalinin and Kharkiv prisons, and elsewhere. About 8,000 of the victims were officers imprisoned during the 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland, another 6,000 were police officers, the rest were Polish intellectuals, deemed by the Soviets to be intelligence agents and saboteurs.
In 1943, the government of Nazi Germany announced the discovery of mass graves in Katyn Forest. When the London-based Polish government-in-exile asked for an investigation by the International Committee of the Red Cross, Stalin promptly severed diplomatic relations with the London-based cabinet. The Soviets claimed that the killings had been carried out by the Germans in 1941 and denied responsibility for the massacres until 1990, when it officially acknowledged and condemned the perpetration of the massacre by the NKVD.
Soviet responsibility for the Katyn killings was confirmed by an investigation conducted by the office of the Prosecutors General of the Soviet Union (1990–1991) and the Russian Federation (1991–2004), however, Russia refused to classify them as a war crime or genocide.
In November 2010, the Russian State Duma passed a declaration blaming Stalin and other Soviet officials for having personally ordained the massacre. (PAP)(PAP)
