Yury Zacharanka


Colonel Yury Zakharanka was the Belarusian minister of internal affairs and oppositional politician abducted and probably killed in 1999.

Early life

Yury Zakharanka was born in a small city of Vasilyevichy, Rechytsa Raion.

Political career

At the moment when Belarus gained independence Zakharanka was deputy chief of Interregional Organised criminality fighting department of the Soviet MVD. In 1994 he was appointed Minister of Internal Affairs of Belarus. On October 16, 1995 he was dismissed from this position by president Alexander Lukashenko. Zakharanka joined the opposition to the president and was elected member of the governing board of the United Civil Party of Belarus. Having strong support among top officers in the army and the State Security Agency Zakharanka was a dangerous enemy for Lukashenko.

Abduction

The ex-minister disappeared in the evening of May 7, 1999. The state did not make serious attempts to search for the politician. Several years later the former MVD official Aleh Ałkajeǔ fled to Germany and stated that he was witness to Zakharanka and several other abducted opposition leaders being murdered on the orders of top government officials. In commemorance with the abducted politicians and political prisoners of Belarus, the Belarusian opposition and its supporters have on the 16th of every month The Day of Solidarity with Belarus.
In September 2004, the European Union and the United States issued travel bans for five Belarusian officials suspected in being involved in the kidnapping of Zacharanka: Interior Affairs Minister Vladimir Naumov, Prosecutor General Viktor Sheiman, Minister for Sports and Tourism Yuri Sivakov, and Colonel Dmitry Pavlichenko from the Belarus Interior Ministry.
In December 2019, Deutsche Welle published a documentary film in which Yury Garavski, a former member of a special unit of the Belarusian Ministry of Internal Affairs, confirmed that it was his unit which had arrested, taken away and murdered Zacharanka and that they later did the same with Viktar Hanchar and Anatol Krassouski.