On 11 August 2020, a grassroots memorial appeared on the place of Taraikovsky's death. During the night it was destroyed by the municipal workers but reappeared the next morning. It was destroyed again and reappeared again. On 13 August, ambassadors of
European Union countries, representatives of the US embassy and other countries laid flowers to the memorial. On 15 August, thousands of Belarusians gathered on
Pushkin Square, where Taraikovsky died, to pay a tribute to him, lay flowers to the monument, and observe a moment of silence. Taraikovsky's funeral ceremony was held at the same day and was attended by around 800 people, although only relatives and friends were initially invited. When the coffin with Taraikovsky was taken out of the ceremony hall, people knelt down, clapped, showed a sign of victory and shouted 'Glory to the hero!', '
Long Live Belarus!', and then sang
Magutny Bozha (Mighty God, a hymn used by the Belarusian opposition). On the same day, Alexander Taraikovsky was buried in the Western cemetery. On 2 September, an inscription “We will not forget!” on the sidewalk near the makeshift memorial to Taraikovsky was covered with salt which prompted a spontaneous protest act. People started to swipe the salt away and put it into garbage bags disregarding the police. Vadim Zamirovski, a
Tut.by photojournalist, was detained for taking pictures of what was going on. Men in civilian clothing approached him from behind, knocked him down, twisted his arms behind his back, and shoved him in a white minibus without license plates and identification signs. Half an hour later they dropped him off in the Sukharevo neighborhood. He was beaten and searched. All the memory cards were taken away. The memorial was covered with salt once more on 4 September, but people removed it again. On the night of 6 September, masked men painted over "We will not forget!". On 9 September, two Minsk residents were detained when they were trying to restore the inscription near the memorial: a 25-year-old woman, who wrote the first word of the phrase, and a 42-year-old man. Criminal proceedings were initiated against them for hooliganism. Later, they were accused of property damage to the sum of more than 10 thousand Belarusian rubles. Still later, the charges were reclassified again as malicious hooliganism and "intentional destruction or damage to property committed in a generally dangerous manner or causing damage on a large scale”. As of October 28, both of them remained in custody in the pre-trial detention center in
Zhodzina. On December 8, the woman was sentenced to one and a half years of restriction of freedom, while the man received a sentence of two years in a
colony. On the same day, three more authors of the inscription in memory of Taraikovsky were sentenced; one of them received a two-year sentence in a strict regime colony. On 17 September,
Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya’s
Telegram channel announced that she was preparing "Taraikovsky's List", a separate list of officials and law enforcement officers who had participated and continue to participate in lawless actions. In May 2021, the state utility company installed a dustbin on the former site of the makeshift memorial. In May and August 2021, a number of people were apprehended and later fined or jailed for laying flowers near the place of Taraikovsky's death. In March 2023, he was posthumously awarded the
Medal of the Order of the Pahonia. == Reactions ==