Interpellation in the matter of the torture of minors in Anoshki

From the members of the Sejm of the Belarusian Club to the Ministers of Justice and of the Interior—concerning the beating and torture of the minor Belarusians Uladzimir Prakazhyn, Mikalai Sharapa, Yan Karachun and Yustyn Akulik.

On the night of 4 to 5 May of this year, in the village of Anoshki, Snou rural district (gmina), Niasvizh county, the Polish teacher Mr. Kowalski and the village head (soltys) Tamash Khomich were killed.

The murder occurred under the following circumstances: on 4 May an investigator of the county police in Niasvizh, Melnik, arrived in the village of Anoshki and demanded a cart from the village head. Having obtained it, he set out on the road; however, after waiting a little, he ordered the peasant to drive back to the village of Anoshki, where he asked the village head to assign him lodgings, which he obtained in the elementary school. As night was approaching (it was already 8 o'clock in the evening), the investigator Melnik went with the village head to the elementary school.

The next morning the inhabitants of the village of Anoshki learned of the murder, in the elementary school, of the village head Tamash Khomich and the teacher Kowalski.

In connection with this, mass arrests of the local population began. Several dozen people were arrested, were tortured and afterwards released. Of those arrested, the following remain in prison to this day: Uladzimir Prakazhyn, 16 years old, Mikalai Sharapa, 19 years old, Yan Karachun, 24 years old, and Yustyn Akulik, 20 years old. They were taken to the manor yard of Kamenka, put in an underground cellar, shackled in chains, their bodies wrapped in wet rags, and they began to be terribly tortured in order to force them to confess guilt. Although the innocent men tried to prove, naming witnesses, that Prakazhyn, Karachun and Akulik had been at a evening party in the house of Anna Prakazhyn at the time the murder was committed, and that Sharapa had gone to the village of Kvachy for firewood and spent the night there, the police did not want to question the witnesses, and went on torturing the arrested until they lost consciousness. Having committed this outrage of abuse, beating and torture of minor Belarusians, they put them in the prison in Niasvizh.

In view of the above, the undersigned ask the Ministers: 1) Do they intend at last to set about eradicating in Poland the abuse, beating and torture of arrested persons? 2) Do they intend immediately to bring to trial the police agents who tortured the minor Belarusians? 3) Do they intend to speed up the judicial investigation in the case of those suspected of the murder of the teacher and the village head?

Warsaw, 3 June 1924.