MINSK, Belarus--People in Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia on 26 April marked the grim anniversary of the 1986 explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power station in northern Ukraine. In Belarus, approximately 5,000 people marched along Minsk’s main thoroughfare, despite the authorities’ ban on the demonstration, and smaller unauthorized rallies took place all around the country.

Fifteen years after the disaster--the world’s largest nuclear power catastrophe--millions of people in the three countries are still suffering from severe physical and psychological damage. According to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, the incidence of cancer in the region is 16 times higher than in countries not affected by the Chernobyl incident. The organization predicts that symptoms linked to the radiation are only now beginning to peak. In Belarus, which suffered the bulk of the radioactive fallout, almost a fifth of the population still lives in contaminated areas, and Chernobyl’s impact remains a highly politicized issue.

In the 1980s, when the Communist Party leadership attempted to hide the truth about the accident, the meltdown--along with the mass graves of the Stalin era in the Kurapaty forest near Minsk--became for many Belarusians symbols of communism’s inhuman essence. The traditional Charnobylski Shliakh (Path of Chernobyl) march to commemorate the victims of the catastrophe became a major annual opposition protest and has continued in the post-Soviet era.

The current policies of the Belarusian authorities are aimed at motivating people to stay in the contaminated areas and at preserving agricultural production there--an approach that the opposition calls criminal--and Belarus’ authoritarian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka has steadfastly maintained that stance. The day of the anniversary he issued a decree cutting profit taxes by 50 percent for newly established enterprises in the areas worst affected by Chernobyl. The new move will stimulate agricultural production on the contaminated territories, the leading government daily Sovetskaya Belorussiya commented approvingly on 26 April.

The same day, while visiting the Homel region--the area most affected by radiation--Lukashenka told reporters that he intended to issue an edict exempting “young specialists” working in radioactively contaminated areas from compulsory military service.

 
How dangerous it is to live in the contaminated areas remains a topic of debate among scientists. Some researchers accuse the government of neglecting and concealing the harmful impact of small, daily radiation doses on the people still residing in the fallout zone.

One of the leading critics of the government’s policy, Yury Bandazheuski, a medical doctor and the former rector of Homel State Medical Institute, is now on trial. Prosecutors claim that Bandazheuski set up a criminal ring to extort bribes from applicants to the institute, but the ex-rector’s supporters argue that the charges were fabricated to silence his criticism of the government for neglecting Chernobyl-related problems. Bandazheuski says he was framed, and a witness in the case testified on 10 April that investigators in the case dictated to him the incriminating statements that he wrote against Bandazheuski.

A number of international medical and human rights organizations have come to Bandazheuski’s defense, urging the Belarusian authorities to give him an opportunity to continue his research. The Homel State Medical Institute, however, abandoned Bandazheuski’s research as “pointless” earlier this year.

--by Alex Znatkevich