The Crime of Chernobyl- The Nuclear Gulag

by Wladimir Tchertkoff

  103 ETHOS, minutes of the meeting held on 17th April 2001.

  Today, even though it has no qualifications in the area of health, ETHOS presents itself as the scientific reference in radioprotection in the Chernobyl territories and coordinates CORE. The CORE program has been the subject of a critical review that we submitted to the European Commission and European parliament in June 2003104.

  104 See Part Four, Chapter III, p. 277.

  The Belrad Institute struggles for survival in the midst of great financial difficulty. It gets its funding from ordinary European citizens, members of health and environmental NGOs. Following criticism of the activities of ETHOS by these associations, Nesterenko was included in the CORE programme as an expert in radioprotection. But he was prevented from distributing pectin as a prophylactic adsorbent to contaminated children because the programme follows the line taken by ETHOS on this question—even though ETHOS has no competence in this area. Mr Frigola (Sweeney’s assistant at DG RELEX—Directorate-General for External Relations at the European Commission) confided to me that not everyone is in agreement in the corridors of power at Brussels, notwithstanding the fact that the ISPRA Common Research Centre is in favour.

  The provisional budget of the programme is 4 million euros, funded among others by the Belarus government, the UNDP, UNESCO, OSCE, the European Commission, the Swiss Agency for Cooperation and Development, and in France by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs and the IRSN. The European Commission, for its part, allocated 2 million euros to CORE (information that was communicated to their Belarusian partners on 8th May 2003).

  1. EXTRACTS FROM A PSR/IPPNW DOCUMENT105, March 2001

  105 Physicians for Social Responsibility/International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. Nobel Peace Prize 1985.

  The nuclear lobby, represented by the IAEA at the UN, systematically dismisses people who try to disseminate the truth about Chernobyl, discredits these researchers or dismisses them from their posts, and gives its support instead to those academics that are willing to undermine or contradict studies revealing the extent of the medical disaster resulting from the radioactive fallout from Chernobyl.

  German, Swiss, French and other researchers and academics whose results conform to the wishes of the promoters of commercial nuclear power and discredit those who express any other point of view, sometimes militate in antinuclear groups where they are able to exert influence. They know how to adapt their discourse to the audience at hand. In the devastated areas of Chernobyl, where they gather material for their publications, these foreign researchers work locally in collaboration with those who are trying to disguise the indelible signs of the catastrophe.

  In France, a group of academics, united in a consortium called ETHOS, with their own particular ethical concerns, are planning research in relation to Chernobyl. As these studies require considerable financial support (travel, salaries, equipment, publications etc) these academics and higher education teachers appeal to NGOs and submit projects that are likely to be considered favourably by funding organisations. One such NGO is the CEPN, Centre d’étude sur l’Evaluation de la Protection dans le domaine Nucléaire (Study Centre for the Evaluation of Nuclear Protection).

  Who is hiding behind CEPN?

  The Centre d’etudes sur l’evaluation de la protection dans la domaine nucleaire (CEPN) is a non-profit association, (as defined by the French Law 1901). The CEPN funds multidisciplinary projects and on its site (www.cepn.asso.fr) we learn that its president and treasurer represent Electricité de France (EDF) and its vice-president represents COGEMA (Areva). The organisations behind this munificent NGO are among the most powerful in the nuclear lobby worldwide. The priority for these companies is that Chernobyl should be erased so that their business, that has been somewhat adversely affected by the suffering of the 9 million human beings who live in areas around the reactor, will prosper.

  It is not surprising then, that having scarcely arrived in Belarus, certain teams funded by the CEPN (400 euros per day for mission expenses), take measures to get rid of those who are helping the people living in territories contaminated by radioactive fallout and who study the consequences of Chernobyl, in the field, in order to protect children, in particular, who are the most vulnerable to the radioactive contamination of the environment.

  2. HOW I GOT TO KNOW ABOUT ETHOS

  In April 2000, while filming the village of Olmany in the Stolin district, I learnt that a French team came to work there from time to time. It was the first time I had ever heard the name ETHOS. All I had been told by Nesterenko was that this team gave information to people and that Pasha Polikushko, the dosimetrist at his LRMC, provided them with measurements of various food products.

  A few months later, I learnt in more detail about the consortium ETHOS from some friends—sociologists at the University of Caen, who were working on a project (ETHOS 2) initially planned for 2000–2001. This meeting took place on 20th January 2001 in Brussels, during a theatre presentation, film projection and public discussion around the theme of Chernobyl. As I viewed the colour photographs of farmers in Olmany exhibited on the walls of the theatre, my ears pricked up when one of the sociologists told me that Jacques Lochard, head of the ETHOS project, was from the CEA (Commissariat à l’énergie atomique) and that his definition of their task could be summarized in the following surprising way. “We need to occupy the territory”. Although the people I was talking to assured me that Mr Lochard was not a nucleocrat and that he did useful work with the inhabitants of the contaminated territories, my curiosity was pîqued. I took the glossy, colour album presenting the work of ETHOS in Olmany 1996–1999, with me to read on the train. The photos of the peasant farmers were accompanied with short poems and a text which ended with this sentence: “living with Chernobyl means learning to live again, to live another way, integrate the presence of radioactivity into daily life as a new component of existence”. This new version of the world order, decreed by the CEA, stuck in my throat. I did not know at that point how my feelings of discomfort would turn to revolt when I learned that the decision had been made, following a proposal from ETHOS, to expel Nesterenko from the villages in the Stolin district (including Olmany) where he distributed pectin so parsimoniously, only to the most contaminated children, without a penny from the CEA to help him.

  The latter part of January was marked by a series of odd coincidences. On my return from Brussels, the TV channel ARTE was studying a proposal for a documentary on this precise subject—ETHOS’ activities. They asked me what I knew about this charitable organisation of volunteers working in the contaminated territories of Chernobyl. In order to check my information, I called Nesterenko in Minsk, who gave me the latest news. He had just written to the President of ComChernobyl106 to protest against the committee’s decision to deprive him of five LRMCs of Stolin district, including Olmany, where he had been working for the past ten years, and this precisely at the request of ETHOS!

  106 Chernobyl Committee, an interministerial body in Belarus that coordinates policy to deal with the consequences of the Chernobyl disaster.

  3. I WRITE TO ARTE ON 23 JANUARY 2001

  ETHOS is not a voluntary organisation, but a multidisciplinary French organisation, funded by, among others, the European Commission’s research program on radioprotection, headed by a representative of the CEA (Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique, the French nuclear lobby).

  At first four, and later seven, research institutes were associated with the project, which has already undertaken activities in the village of Olmany. I made a visit and filmed there last April without seeing any positive results107. I interviewed peasant families abandoned to cope on their own, whose children had radioactive loads exceeding permissible levels (20 Bq/kg body weight). I filmed a small child who weighed 12 kilos and had 800 Bq/kg which means 10,000 atomic disintegrations per second in the organism. They had never met representatives of ETHOS—which
does not mean of course, that other families have not been involved. But what are the criteria for selection? ETHOS operates through central and local power structures.

  107 Measurements taken in January 2001 on 31 samples of milk from the Olmany area revealed 22 samples where levels were well in excess (up to 2,600 Bq/l) of the maximum admissible limit of 100 Bq/l (a level that doctors already consider excessive for children especially if it continues over many years. In Russia the “norm” is 50 Bq/l. See Part Five, Chapter I, “The illusion of norms”, p.300).

  What is more, this French organisation provides a service to ComChernobyl in the eviction of independent Belarusian scientists and specialists from the area who publish the true figures on contamination every three months and provide real assistance to the population with very few resources and in the face of incredible obstacles. On this subject, in addition to the document attached, I will send you the letter of protest that Professor Nesterenko wrote to ComChernobyl just eight days ago, as soon as I have translated it.

  4. I MAKE CONTACT WITH OUR ADVERSARIES

  I found myself, once again, in sole possession of a shocking piece of information (the previous one was the arrest of Bandazhevsky) and under an obligation to take some form of serious action, beyond informing the TV channel ARTE. None of the NGOs or the people involved in supporting Nesterenko and Bandazhevsky knew about ETHOS. What could I do? Regardless of the lobby, I decided to write to the men and women of the consortium ETHOS themselves. When I had received and translated the correspondence between Nesterenko and ComChernobyl, I asked the sociologists from Caen University for the email addresses of members of the consortium and I wrote them the following letter:

  Letter written on 8 February 2001

  to the 16 directors and operators of ETHOS

  Dear Sir/Madam,

  The great writer, Albert Camus, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, was a master of succinct style. In one of his notebooks he wrote “To live is to verify”. When someone asked him rather disingenuously “What is truth?” he said “The opposite of a lie”. He had a tragic trust in humanity108.

  108 Vassili Nesterenko, who had been battling for fifteen years against the nuclear plague and the lies of the scientific bureaucracy reminded me very much of Dr Rieux, the hero of Albert Camus’ novel La Peste.

  It is in his spirit of trust and the quest for truth “in spite of everything”, that I have decided to write to you.

  You have chosen a beautiful name—ETHOS—for your action. And I am appealing to your ethical sense as a human being. To find out whether you are aware of the damage you are doing, or whether it is corrupt government officials in a country that has been so wounded, who are doing it in your name, without your knowledge.

  Despite everything stated in the documents attached to this letter, I still find it hard to believe that the name ETHOS masks a conscious determination to do harm.

  The independent work undertaken by Nesterenko must be protected, supported and developed in the territories contaminated by Chernobyl. You are blocking his path and chasing him out.

  With the financial, political and human means at your disposal, you could help him pursue his work, the most intelligent and effective response to the current situation. I am in contact with him daily and I know the difficulties he faces.

  I look forward to your response. The future of this scientist—a man who is devoted to his country—depends on it. It is still within your power to stop this infamy.

  I attached to this email the two letters to ARTE and the correspondence between Nesterenko with ComChernobyl. (They are reproduced in part in this chapter on pages 272–274). My letter unsettled Jacques Lochard, as he told me himself the next day over the telephone. He tried to convince me of his best intentions regarding Professor Nesterenko. He considered that the activities of ETHOS and of Belrad were complementary, at the same time making a puzzling and inaccurate distinction between a “national observatory managed by Professor Nesterenko and the ETHOS program which would undertake local and operational dosimetry, involving the population”. Yet this was precisely the originality of Nesterenko’s direct objective method that he had perfected and developed109 alone in the face of inertia on the part of the Ministry of Health in the villages ignored by the German institute Julich.110 What had really happened was that the consortium ETHOS had learnt from Nesterenko’s experience, used his data and was now appropriating it in order to supplant him—a true case of plagiarism. But there was one fundamental flaw: ETHOS’ mission, as defined by the French nuclear lobby, had an unbridgeable statutory limitation which excluded any work in the area of health. ETHOS was not qualified to deal with the health of the population. So what was it doing in Chernobyl if it was not qualified? At this point, the phrase about the foreign “occupation of the territory” to deal with this “new atomic element of our existence” began to take on a more sinister meaning. Supported politically and financially by the nuclear lobby, ETHOS, which gave the appearance of addressing problems caused by the Chernobyl catastrophe, was actually preventing the recognition of the health consequences, which independent scientists like Nesterenko and Bandazhevsky were revealing in the face of thousands of obstacles. Furthermore—for those who had an interest in it—see the US American programme BelAm mentioned by Pflugbeil111—the biological purity of the contaminated guinea pigs under observation remained intact because the radioactive load in their bodies was not reduced by an adsorbent that the European Commission had refused to finance. A puzzle of global dimensions made up of apparently unconnected compartments each closed off from the other. As for Jacques Lochard, he assured me that collaboration between the two bodies was important and to be encouraged, and that Nesterenko could benefit from European support: 1,500,000 euros were budgeted, of which 80% were to be spent in the country, he told me. (This “manna” has never materialised despite the submission of several projects). He also told me that the removal of Nesterenko from the villages followed a decision taken by the Belarusian authorities within the framework of ETHOS 2, which involved the French team and its Belarusian (governmental) partners in five villages of the district of Stolin. That it had not resulted from any request by ETHOS. However, the laconic response from ComChernobyl leaves us in no doubt:

  109 See the description given by Dr Fernex to Lukashenko that I quote further on in my detailed letter to Arte.

  110 See Part Two, Chapter IX, p. 160.

  111 See Part Three, Chapter VI, p. 245.

  Committee on Problems Relating to Consequences of the Chernobyl Catastrophe (ComChernobyl).

  25.01.2001

  To the Director of the

  Belrad Radioprotection Institute

  V. Nesterenko

  The Committee on problems relating to the consequences of the Chernobyl disaster has taken the decision to transfer five local radiological monitoring centres (LRMC) of Olmany, Gorodnya, Belousha, Rechitsa and Terebezhov of the district of Stolin, to the Radiological Institute in Brest.

  This decision has been taken on the recommendation of ComChernobyl’s working group, in collaboration with French scientists from the European Commission’s project “ETHOS 2”, in line with the proposal from the latter.

  Vice-President, V.E. Shevchuk112.

  112 Shevchuk is an apparatchik from the Ministry of Health in ComChernobyl.

  Following our telephone conversation, I wrote this email to Jacques Lochard to explain my view precisely:

  9th February 2001

  Following our telephone conversation yesterday, I need to make the following points, in order that matters be clear between us:

  1.—I understood from our telephone conversation that you do not want conflict—quite the opposite—you are seeking to clarify the matter in a way that will be constructive and beneficial to the work of independent Belarusian scientists.

  I visited your internet s
ite yesterday www.cepn.asso.fr. I read there that ETHOS is a CEPN project. The founding members of CEPN are EDF, the CEA and COGEMA.

  The declared intention of ETHOS is to assist the victims of the Chernobyl disaster. Three of the founders of CEPN are promoters and users of the very industry which caused the disaster. Without free and independent information on the real consequences of the disaster, no assistance is possible. But this scientific information is a threat to the industry on which you depend. There is therefore a conflict of interest. Can you hold an objective view on these essential points?

  Only your political actions will convince us of the reality of your intentions.

  In addition, the link between those who are persecuting the independent Belarusian scientists, of whom we are speaking, and the CEPN has existed for several years.

  I.V. Rolevich, mentioned in Nesterenko’s letters, was the vice-president of ComChernobyl during those years when 285 of Nesterenko’s 370 functioning centres, were eliminated. It is Rolevich personally who took that decision. And the name of Rolevich appears in CEPN publications between 1996–1999.