The Crime of Chernobyl- The Nuclear Gulag

by Wladimir Tchertkoff

  Since 1996, the Belrad institute and the Gomel Institute of Medicine have been working in parallel. Nesterenko travelled through the villages, measuring the levels of internal contamination by caesium-137 among the inhabitants, using spectrometers provided by Western NGOs. For the histological study of the effects of caesium-37 on tissue, he provided the researchers at Gomel with automatic gamma-radiometers that he had designed himself, to be used during autopsy, to measure the level of caesium-137 per kilogram in various organs. The two institutes were able to show, in both laboratory animals and children, that by reducing the level of caesium-137 in the diet, it was possible to avoid irreversible damage to the organs. This opened up an entirely new line of research.

  In April 1999, the two scientists were invited by the Belarusian parliament to join a commission whose task was to check the register of radiation dose received and the use of funds provided by the State to the Institute of Radiological Medicine at the Ministry of Health. Their findings were not welcomed by those committee members who had close links to the Ministry. Bandazhevsky, Nesterenko and A. Stozharov, former director of the Institute at the Ministry, signed a separate report and sent it to the Security Council of Belarus, which was responsible for the health of the population. The Security Council rejected the old register of doses produced by the Ministry of Health and invited them to amend it as a matter of urgency, in line with the recommendations made by the three writers of the report. Bandazhevsky himself sent a report to President Lukashenko, in which he severely criticised the work of the Institute of Radiological Medicine, and claimed that out of the seventeen billion roubles spent by the institute, by 1998 only one billion had been spent effectively. In retaliation, over the next few weeks, the Gomel Medical Institute was inspected three times in quick succession, although no problems were found. During the night of 13th July 1999, Bandazhevsky was arrested on the basis of a decree against terrorism issued by Lukashenko. On 18th June 2001, he was sentenced by the military tribunal of the Supreme Court of Belarus, to eight years in prison for corruption, without any evidence being put forward. The new rector at the Gomel Institute of Medicine abandoned the research programme, declaring that it was not worthy of a higher education establishment.

  Bandazhevsky represented a nightmare for the “experts” of the nuclear lobby, an unforeseen obstacle to their strategy of ignorance. Here was an anatomical pathologist restoring scientific research to its rightful place at the heart of the open-air laboratory, which had resulted from the most serious technological disaster in history. He had been preparing for this mission since adolescence, and he had devoted himself passionately to studying “the influence of different environmental factors (physical, chemical, biological) on gestation, foetal development and on the formation of the body’s vital organs and systems”. In other words, his training equipped him to understand perfectly the mechanisms and implications of the effects of proximity of radionuclides on vital organs at a cellular level, an area of study that official science currently refuses to recognise or even to discuss. It is at this microscopic level of his work that authentic scientific research will blow wide open the whole subject of toxic and radiological phenomena of low dose incorporated radionuclides in the human organism that the ICRP, UNSCEAR, IAEA, WHO, CEA, the UN Security Council and the Pentagon have kept under lock and key.

  Bandazhevsky’s quest for knowledge of these secret and forbidden mechanisms simply had to be stopped. His discoveries would be catastrophic for the nuclear lobby. Paradoxically, their attempt to silence him ended in defeat because by arresting him and throwing him into jail in such a brutal way, his case became known throughout the world.

  The day after the scientist was sentenced to eight years in prison, Nesterenko, behind the wheel of his car, was driving us to meet Galina Bandazhevskaya. Despondent, anguished, she had just asked “How do I carry on with my life?” He was in shock, as we all were, and expressed his thoughts out loud as he drove: “It’s terrible. He won’t be able to continue his scientific research for so many years. I even wonder if there is any point in continuing my work. I’m not a doctor. I’m a physicist. It is very important for me that the doctors tell me the point at which I, as a radioprotection specialist, must intervene to protect the child against serious illness and death. To have this information, we needed to do more research, we needed to keep going…”

  These two scientists were obviously not alone in understanding what needed to be done, and not the only scientists pursuing this research. But they were the only ones who found themselves physically at the heart of the contaminated territories, in the midst of the health, political and humanitarian problems posed by the disaster at Chernobyl. They were alone in their determination to honour their role as scientists and to honour science itself, in the face of their people’s suffering. They had resisted extreme pressure—Vassili Nesterenko for fifteen years and Yury Bandazhevsky for ten years (in 2001). As well as the vilification and the continual obstacles put in their way by those who serve the lobby in the East and in the West to prevent their activities and muzzle the press, the European Commission programme TACIS (Technical Assistance to the Commonwealth of Independent States) had systematically refused requests to finance radioprotection projects for children, submitted repeatedly by Nesterenko.

  The real and symbolic significance of certain moments in history appears to be inversely proportional to the apparent fragility of the individuals involved. This is one of those moments, perhaps a chance that should not be lost, at the heart of the Chernobyl tragedy. In supporting these two outstanding scientists, humanely, politically, and financially, civil society in the West, in Europe and in the United States have the opportunity to come together in a truly humanitarian effort, and to confront the inner sanctum of our governments whose suicidal policies are out of control and put at risk the whole of humanity. Their real aim is not to bring about the downfall of the nuclear industry as such. The industry is already condemned following the Chernobyl disaster and can only defend itself about what happened there with secrecy and deceit. The real objective of these two scientists and their supporters is scientific truth, properly funded and freely shared. More than ever, in the nuclear domain, if humanity is to survive, we must have independent research and knowledge. “Every human being has the right to know everything that relates to her health, to the health of her children and to the health of those closest to her, what to avoid and why.59” The fact that these two men find themselves in the same place, involved in the same struggle, is a fragile chance at this particular moment in history.

  59 John W. Gofman, Chernobyl Accident, Radiation Consequences for this and Future Generations, 1993.

  I heard about Bandazhevsky’s imprisonment purely by chance in September 1999. He had already been in prison since July, and had been through some brutal experiences. No-one in the West knew. I might not have been able to attend the projection of my films at the festival “ East-West “ in the town of Die ( France), where Svetlana Alexieich mentioned it to me in passing at the end of our first conversation between “two Russians abroad”. I asked her “How is Nesterenko?”- I knew that Svetlana knew him, because he is one of the “voices” in her book “Voices from Chernobyl”. “Not very good at the moment. One of his friends has been arrested”. “Who?” “A doctor from Gomel”. “You mean Bandazhevsky!” “Yes”. “And you just tell me like that?!” Suddenly I was at an impasse. What should I do? I had not met him the previous year but Nesterenko had talked of him as an outstanding research scientist, who understood what was happening, and whose data were turning the official dogma upside down. I was struck not only by the brutal clarity of the message sent out by his arrest but also by the silence and resignation of the friends I had made in Belarus. Two months had passed and no-one in the West knew anything. I had just described the rebel Nesterenko, and his radioprotection work with children in the contaminated villages in Belarus in a television documentary60, but he had not thought to
pick up a phone to let me know. The Iron Curtain, no longer physically there but an enduring presence, still separated the minds of citizens of Eastern Europe from the victors of the Cold War. Even Svetlana Alexievich had only told me what had happened after I had asked routinely for news of a mutual acquaintance.

  60 Le Piège atomique (The atomic trap), TSI (Swiss Italian Television), May 1999

  Something had to be done. But what? I didn’t know anyone either in France, Switzerland or Italy with whom I could share the weight and the full significance of this apparently small news item. “You don’t say! Another arrest somewhere in Belarus—not even in the Ukraine—with everything else that’s going on in the world!” While preparing my programme I had read the name of an Emeritus Professor at the University of Basle in Switzerland, Dr Michel Fernex, in the book Permanent People’s Tribunal on Chernobyl61. And now a fragile chain of coincidences (and opportunities) began to take shape: Professor Fernex knew Nesterenko’s work very well. He admired Bandazhevsky’s work and had been very impressed when he had visited the Institute of Medicine at Gomel. “Have you heard the news?” “What news?” “Bandazhevsky is in prison”. There was a moment of stunned silence at the other end of the line, and then the fireworks began. Solange Fernex, Michel’s wife, had been a Deputy at the European Parliament, and a long time anti-nuclear activist, with a vast network of contacts and Internet links to organisations all over the world. Michel Fernex had been a member of the Steering Committee on Tropical Diseases Research at WHO, and a critical observer of the 1995 WHO conference and the 1996 IAEA conference on the consequences of Chernobyl. He followed the international debate about the effects of radiation on health very closely. He was very familiar with the way the pseudo-scientists “accredited” by the lobby used subterfuges to falsify statistics and produce flawed epidemiological studies, containing epistemological errors to suit their purpose62.

  61 Rosalie Bertell, Permanent People’s Tribunal, International Medical Commission on Chernobyl and International Peace Bureau. Chernobyl: environmental, health and human implications, Vienna, Austria 12–15 April 1996.

  62 M. Fernex, “La catastrophe de Tchernobyl et la sante”, in Chroniques sur la Bielorussie contemporaine, L’Harmattan, 2001, Appendix I.

  Appeals were made immediately to mobilise public opinion, political figures and institutions in the “free world” about the fate of the prisoner. This was the beginning of the campaign, led by individuals and organisations in the West, to free Bandazhevsky so that he could continue with his scientific research, and to support Nesterenko in his campaign to measure internal radiation in children and to provide them with some radio-protection in the contaminated villages.

  At the beginning, fearing that telephone conversations could be tapped, I did not dare ask Nesterenko about it except by allusion and in veiled terms so as not to create problems for him. But he spoke openly about it and this allowed me to speak freely also: his wisdom and restraint, his reputation as a respected scientist in his own country did not prevent him, however, from speaking bluntly and criticising the Ministry of Health policies. The risks he took were carefully calculated and based on scientific understanding. He banished fear because he felt it blunted his judgement and paralysed his ability to act. He told me that Bandazhevsky had been arrested as a result of an organised smear campaign from a group of doctors and civil servants within the Ministry of Health, who wanted both to block his research, which was beginning to pose a danger to them, and to intimidate independent scientists. He faxed me an article by Irina Makovetskaya, a brave journalist who, later on, would follow up the story of Bandazhevsky’s torments in prison in the pages of the opposition newspaper BDG (Bielorousskaya Delovaya Gazeta). The articles written by Irina Makovetskaya and Lara Nevmenova helped us to understand the real context and allowed us to bring the affair to public notice internationally and to keep it in the spotlight. I quote the first two paragraphs of this series of articles that I posted on the internet:

  Professor Bandazhevsky has been removed from his post as Rector

  of the Gomel Institute of Medicine.

  On July 12th, Vladimir Ravkov, lieutenant-colonel in the medical service and holder of the Chair of Military Medicine at the Institute, was arrested in the garage of the Institute, taken by force by staff from the Directorate of the Committee against organised crime, put in prison and interrogated for several hours. He remembers having been given a glass of water to drink in the judge’s office, after which he could not formulate his thoughts clearly, and everything passed by in a fog. His wife claims that he was drugged because, in his normal state, he would never have agreed to slander Bandazhevsky.

  Professor Bandazhevsky was arrested twenty four hours later, on 13th July, late at night. That day a ministerial commission was in the process of monitoring the entrance examinations for the Gomel Institute of Medicine, and Yury Bandazhevsky, in his role as rector, had asked the members of the commission to defend the Institute against “damaging insinuations”. The call was heeded: a few hours later, the rector’s flat was searched and two television sets, a video recording machine, a computer, a bunch of keys, and four diaries were removed in order to establish that no bribes had been taken. The commission staff also searched Bandazhevsky’s office at the Institute, and the garage and his mother’s apartment at Grodno, but they found no “compromising material”. Nevertheless, Bandazhevsky was jailed.

  (I. Makovetskaya—BDG. Bielorousskaya Delovaya Gazeta—8th September 1999)

  Over the next months and years, Amnesty International adopted Bandazhevsky as a prisoner of conscience. The European Parliament awarded him a “Passport for Freedom”, demanding that he be allowed to pursue his research. The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) demanded that the decision of the court should be overturned due to eight separate infringements of the Belarusian Criminal Code.

  The first to intervene with both NGOs (non-governmental organisations) and with political and scientific institutions in Europe, were Solange and Michel Fernex, Bella and Roger Belbéoch, the Groupement de scientifiques pour l’information sur l’énergie nucléaire, (GSIEN)63, Danielle Mitterand (Fondation France-Libertés), Abraham Béhar (President of IPPNW France)64, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, (Solange Fernex was the President of the French section)65. CRIIRAD became involved in the campaign in February 2001. CRIIRAD organised a demonstration with a number of other organisations on 25th May 2002, in front of the United Nations and the World Health Organisation in Geneva. Many letters were sent to the authorities in Belarus66.

  63 Later the International Human Rights Network at the Academy of Sciences would intervene.

  64 International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. Yury Bandazhevsky was awarded the XIV congress medal by its President, Abraham Behar

  65 Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom

  66 Film Youri et Galina Bandajevsky, de W. Tchertkoff, Feldat Film 2000 at http://enfants-tchernobylbelarus.org/zippy/nous_de_tchernobyl.flv.zip

  At the same time, support came from organisations from across the Atlantic. The New York Academy of Sciences, of which Bandazhevsky had been an active member since 1996, approached the Belarusian authorities directly. In France, the Collectif des centres de documentation en histoire ouvrière et sociale (Collective of Documentation Centres in Workers and Social History) intervened.

  Following his first arrest, Bandazhevsky was in prison for five and a half months. On 27th December 1999, under pressure from international opinion, he was released, on condition that he live in Minsk and not leave the country before his trial. Nesterenko was there to greet him when he was released from prison and welcomed him formally to Belrad as a member of the institute’s staff. He stayed with his brother-in-law in Minsk temporarily but was able to visit his family in Gomel from time to time. In April 2000, we were able to interview hi
m, with his wife Galina, about the dramatic effects his discoveries had had on the family.

  Chapter II

  BANDAZHEVSKY’S

  SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERIES

  Since 1988, Bandazhevsky had put forward, through the official channels, a number of far reaching proposals for scientific research to the Academy of Sciences and the Minister of Health in Belarus. “I considered it my duty as a doctor to help to solve the problems related to the disaster. It seemed to me that what had been done so far had not resolved the existing problems. Above all there seemed to be no clear understanding of the mechanisms influencing the incorporation of radionuclides in the body, and how they act on the structure and function of cells and tissues, and on the metabolism”. His passion for this area of research—“the influence of different factors (physical, chemical, biological) on gestation, foetal development, and the development of various vital organs and systems”—impelled him quite naturally to work in the Chernobyl territories.

  In 1990, Bandazhevsky left the Grodno region, which had been spared any radioactive fallout. At 33, he already had a brilliant career, as director of the central laboratory for scientific research, but he left for Gomel to help the people living in the most highly contaminated territories in the South of Belarus. He was appointed rector of an Institute of Medicine, which did not yet exist and which he had to set up himself. Most doctors had abandoned the area.

  Energetic, stubborn, driven by his vocation for scientific research, he worked relentlessly to set up the institute, train 1000 doctors and through three distinct, complementary lines of research, he discovered that caesium-137, incorporated at low doses in contaminated food, concentrates unequally in different organs of the body, leading to much higher doses in some organs than the average level over the whole body, and progressively destroys vital organs. With his wife Galina, a paediatrician and cardiologist, Yury Bandazhevsky described caesium cardiomyopathy, a new illness which some Western scientists believe will be named after him : beyond a certain threshold of prolonged intoxication from caesium, heart failure becomes irreversible.