Interpellation in the Case of the Police Officer Kuchejda

Members of the Sejm Yaremich and comrades, of the Belarusian Club, to the Chairman of the Council of Ministers, in the matter of removing the police sergeant Kuchejdo from the Hrodna police.

Because of a flood of complaints from the population of the Hrodna county about beatings and torture of the people by the local police, the "Sejm Commission for the Examination of Abuses of the Administration in the Eastern Borderlands" went to Hrodna on 9 May 1923 to check the facts submitted. On 10 May the commission, under the chairmanship of the member of the Sejm Tugut, was in the Martsinkantsy gmina of Hrodna county. The commandant of the police station in that gmina was a certain Kuchejdo; at that station two people had been killed, supposedly for trying to escape. The Sejm Commission did not clarify this matter, because it had already been referred to the prosecutor. But the Commission heard up to a hundred witnesses about the terrible and inhuman torture of the people by the station commandant Kuchejdo.

All confirmed that Kuchejdo ordered the policemen to torture people (beating on the heels, with whips, and so on), while he himself sat and drank vodka to the music of a "balalaika". The Commission unanimously stated that only a madman or a sadist could act in this way, and that there should be no place in the police for such people. When the Commission asked the commandant of the police of Hrodna county whether he had known about comrade Kuchejdo's torture of people, the county commandant declared that such facts were known to him, that for his part he had referred the matter to the prosecutor and had begun disciplinary proceedings, and that he had removed Kuchejdo from the performance of his duties. I was personally convinced that Kuchejdo would receive the punishment he deserved, but it turned out otherwise.

After some time I learned that Kuchejdo had received a higher official position than he had held before, for he was appointed commandant of a section of the border guard in Hrodna county. This matter was raised at a session of the Administrative Commission at the beginning of this year, which was attended by the commandant of the state police, Mr. Bozhentski, who answered the chairman of the Commission: "Mr. Chairman! Commandant Kuchejdo will not be in the police!" Yet neither the decision of the Sejm Commission nor the promise of the commandant Mr. Bozhentski helped in the least. Up to 17 May of this year Kuchejdo has been strolling most peacefully in a police uniform, continuing to abuse the people.

In view of the above, the interpellants ask the Chairman of the Council of Ministers: 1) does he intend to remove Kuchejdo from the police and hand him over to the judicial authorities? 2) does he intend to hold responsible the commandants of the county police and of the voivodeship police, and the commandant of the state police, Mr. Bozhentski, for permitting Kuchejdo's criminal acts?

Warsaw, 6 June 1924.