The Crime of Chernobyl- The Nuclear Gulag

by Wladimir Tchertkoff

  I was familiar with the CORE programme because I had read the draft document which had been sent to us via the European Parliament by the Office EuropAid Cooperation Office at the European Commission in Brussels.

  On 18 June 2003, on behalf of the association Children of Chernobyl Belarus of which I was secretary, I sent a detailed critique of the programme to European parliamentarians and political and institutional authorities. In the covering note I explained that:

  The program ignores health problems in a region where more than 80% of the children are ill as a result of the Chernobyl disaster. This figure was 20% before 1986. The memorandum of the programme CORE, to which thirteen international partners115 have signed up, promises an independent audit in five years time to evaluate its effectiveness. In our view, the critical analysis that we present here must be taken into account from the start of the project, because the health catastrophe in the contaminated territories is worsening and reaching epidemic proportions. The contaminated populations, abandoned for seventeen years by the international community, cannot wait another five years for a project that offers no qualified medical intervention.

  115 The Belarus government Chernobyl Committee; the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP); the French Embassy; the German Embassy; the European Commission; The Swiss Directorate for Development and Cooperation; UNESCO; the World Bank; the European Committee for Partnership and Preparation of CORE; the executive committee of the Bragin district; the executive committee of Svetlogorsk district; the executive committee of Stolin; the executive committee of Chechersk district.

  I have restricted excerpts from the report I wrote criticising the CORE programme to what is strictly necessary. Some of the people involved in the programme at the time I sent the report, have since been replaced. I added a paragraph to the 2003 text (see page 294) to include Belrad’s assessment of the first stage (between 2004–2005) which demonstrates the ineffectiveness of the CORE strategy in terms of the radioprotection of children.

  ETHOS IS REBORN FROM ITS ASHES

  IN THE FORM OF CORE

  DOCUMENT

  CORE—Cooperation for the rehabilitation of living conditions in the territories of Belarus contaminated by the Chernobyl accident. (Project, Version of 15th November 2002).

  While reading my comments on this EU financed program, I suggest that the reader bear in mind the famous report sent by Bandazhevsky to the Belarus government mentioned above (see p. 200).

  Everything that CORE proposes in its text, was learned by ETHOS from Nesterenko, before they removed five of the Stolin district villages from under his control, where he had worked for more than ten years in the local radiological monitoring centres (LRMC) that he had founded. It was Nesterenko, in fact, who created, beginning in 1990, 370 local radiological monitoring centres (LRMC) for food in the most contaminated villages; he who trained professionals in the villages (doctors, nurses, teachers etc) in radioprotection; it was he who gave instructions to children who are more receptive than adults, so that they, in their turn, could teach their parents about ways to prepare food before cooking;. he was the first and the only person to undertake systematic measurement of the internal contamination in children’s bodies and to provide this data to the Ministry of Health and to Professor Bandazhevsky, who correlated the data with various illnesses he was studying.

  But here the parallels between Nesterenko and the authors of the ETHOS-CORE programme end. There is a major omission in the ETHOS-CORE programme and an ideology which totally changes the nature and renders inoperable the proven radioprotection measures advocated by Nesterenko and Bandazhevsky. The scientific contribution of these two scientists was the demonstration of the nocivity of the chronic incorporation of radioactive caesium to cells and tissues, as well as the possibility of eliminating this radioactive poison by administering pectin orally. This problem of eliminating caesium-137, when it has been incorporated through contaminated food is not taken into account within the CORE programme. On the contrary it is opposed. If, as Nesterenko has recommended, a policy of prevention through the administration of pectin-based adsorbents were officially adopted, it would radically change the nature of this European programme. Were pectin to be recognised as being genuinely effective and useful, were the health benefits of this natural product that accelerates the elimination of radionuclides from the body to be recognised, it would then follow that there really had been mass contamination, that it really was caused by caesium-137, dispersed by the fire at Chernobyl and not by “stress”, and that it necessitates, if not the evacuation of all children from the contaminated territories, at least the urgent distribution of the food additive to slow the pace of this health catastrophe. But ETHOS-CORE refuses to finance pectin even while it rehabilitates the territories. In their statement of intention there is no explanation of how the rehabilitation that they recommend could guarantee the protection of the 80% of children of Belarus who are ill as a result of the Chernobyl disaster. Before 1986, only 20% of children were ill, according to official figures from the Ministry of Health116.

  116 Statement from the President of the Academy of Sciences of Belarus, in December 1999, confirmed by the vice Minister of Health in Belarus at a parliamentary hearing on the consequences of the Chernobyl disaster, in April 2000.

  SOME QUESTIONS AND COMMENTS ABOUT THE CORE PROJECT117

  117 The commentaries refer to the key phrases that I have put in italics in the original.

  CORE.—Preamble: why the project CORE? (p. 3 in the original document)

  “The choice of a cooperative programme for rehabilitation, on which CORE is based, derives from the partners’ shared conviction that the situation experienced by the inhabitants of contaminated territories following the Chernobyl accident and the search for methods of rehabilitation is a major issue not just at a local and national level in Belarus but for the international community.

  This view results from the shared feeling of great vulnerability of people and societies when faced with a situation of large scale radioactive pollution. It is an issue that confronts all countries that have chosen nuclear power as part of their energy production, as well as their neighbours. Knowledge of this situation and of what is at stake has become an inevitable dimension in developing energy policies which have an impact on people as well as the environment.

  Beyond the issue of nuclear power, the programme partners are committed to the belief that this situation is central to the ethical problems posed by technical and scientific development and its effect on human beings”.

  Comments.—Right away, the real issue has been skirted, diluted.

  How can an accident at a nuclear reactor be considered “beyond the issue of nuclear power”? The incoherence, the absence of any logic, so absurd that it renders it invisible, creates the illusion that this is a serious and pluralistic approach, but the entire project comes to a standstill: having removed nuclear power from the debate, the moral question relating to “its effects on people” is raised. But the “effects of what”? Is this ethical question about technical and scientific development being raised in relation to Chernobyl? In this text, you have to pay great attention to each word. As Orwell had already shown “it is words that determine action”. A conflict that involves the lives of millions of people is made to depend on nuance, a semantic hide and seek, verbal evasiveness. According to the official dogma, internal low dose radiation has no significant effect on human health. CORE gears up therefore to rehabilitate the area. You can live there perfectly well; you just have to follow the instructions of the “experts”. Not only have they been subjected to the contamination but now the victims are subjected to authoritarian rule: they are crushed twice. If they fall ill, it is because they didn’t follow instructions. It is their fault. They are both victims and guilty. In this scenario, pectin serves no purpose. It is just an embarrassment because it lays bare the radiological cause that needs to be
concealed. This is followed by a sociological analysis of symbols and behaviour, the way people will live and what will become of them in this “new world”.

  CORE.—“The implementation of rehabilitation measures in no way interferes with the individual and collective choices of those directly affected by contamination in the territories affected by Chernobyl”.

  What, concretely, does “rehabilitation” of an area, saturated in caesium 137, mean? What freedom of “choice” can there be when one is forced to continue living in such a place? A choice between what and what? The implementation of rehabilitation measures by CORE, which is funded by European taxpayers, predetermines and conditions any decision that might be made by the population themselves.

  Censorship of the scientific studies undertaken by Professor Bandazhevsky, and of Nesterenko’s radioprotection measures, combined with this supposed management of the consequences of the accident, financed by the EU, guarantees that people will remain in “ignorance and uncertainty” in a new world, in other words a world to which they are condemned to live and to which they will have to “accommodate” themselves.

  CORE.—“CORE aims to create conditions of choice and an autonomous and informed way of living for the people living in these territories. This is why the approach developed by CORE is above all based on people and their individual and collective capacity for initiative. The aim is to support local initiatives and implement educational measures”.

  What is this autonomy? What individual and collective initiative could possibly be commensurate with the scale of the disaster? “Every man for himself!” Bandazhevsky wrote, just before he was thrown into prison as the government abdicated all responsibility for people’s health. Because it is the government—governments, Europe, the rich world—that is responsible. Nesterenko called for the immediate evacuation of children living in a radius of 70 km at first, and then of 100 km, around the reactor. And despite the fact that ETHOS promised to involve him, Nesterenko was not included in the preparation committee of CORE. He did in fact participate, (but not as a right) in the preparation phase of the project but only after the German and French ambassadors intervened.

  CORE.—“With this perspective in mind, CORE aims to encourage the development of a shared heritage at local, national and international levels, through recognition of, understanding and remembering the Chernobyl event and the response made by humankind to the situation”.

  A museum to commemorate a past event? The new illnesses, the miscarriages, the abortions, the birth defects occurring now and in the future are not part of the “Chernobyl event”? In order to understand what is happening in the contaminated territories and organisms from a medical urgency point of view read Dr Michel Fernex’s note118.

  118 See Michel Fernex at the end of this chapter, p. 297.

  In the chapters entitled “Preparation”, “Projects”, “Partners”, there are lists of the people involved in the programme, some of whom are known to us

  CORE.—Some of the contributors to the preparation phase (p.4 in the original document)

  Preparation Committee

  Valéry Berestov, President, Executive Committee of the District of Slavgorod; Neil Buhne, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP); Vladimir Shevchuk, Vice President, Chernobyl Committee, Belarus; Gilles Hériard Dubreuil, ETHOS; Norbert Jousten, Chief of Delegation, European Commission for Belarus and Ukraine; Sergei Kulyk, World Bank; Guillaume Kaspersky, French Embassy in Belarus; Sylvie Lemasson, French Embassy in Belarus; Jacques Lochard, ETHOS; Vassili Maximenko, President, Executive Committee of the District of Chechersk; Henry Ollagnon, ETHOS; Vladimir Pashkevich, President, Executive Committee of the District of Stolin; Richard Stefanovich, President of the Executive Committee of the District of Bragin; Vladimir Tsalko, President, Chernobyl Committee of Belarus; Matthias Weingart, Swiss Consul, Belarus, Coordinator Humanitarian Aid.

  Details:

  • Vladimir Shevchuk is the Ministry of Health’s man, close to Tsalko in ComChernobyl. He is the one who informed Nesterenko that the villages in Stolin District had been removed from his project at the instigation of ETHOS.

  • Gilles Hériard Dubreuil, ETHOS, Director of Mutadis. This study group, specialized in social management of risk, is responsible for coordinating the CORE project. As such, he may play an important role in the decision to accept or refuse financial support for pectin, requested by Nesterenko. For the moment, he is opposed.

  From 2nd-4th May 2003, Nesterenko took part in a conference in Brühl, Germany, where the most interesting discussion took place during the session “Debates at the IAEA, at the European Commission and at the United Nations on the Consequences of Chernobyl”. The presidents (and speakers) at this session were Dr Edmund Lengfelder and Hériard Dubreuil, CORE programme, Paris.

  Hériard Dubreuil, who arrived from Paris accompanied by Professor Ollagnon, asked the Germans to participate in the CORE programme. After Ollagnon’s presentation, Lengfelder used the occasion to show his hostility to the nuclear lobby publicly by posing the following question: “ETHOS was financed by Euratom, isn’t CORE also a project of the nuclear lobby?”

  Before the session, Hériard Dubreuil and Ollagnon told Nesterenko that the French Ambassador had sent them Information Bulletin No. 23 from Belrad, in which CORE was criticised for its refusal to protect the children with pectin cures. Hériard Dubreuil declared that “in future French scientists would give their approval for the use of pectin”. Nesterenko replied that the children were ill today and they didn’t have time to wait for the French scientists.

  After our denunciation of Nesterenko’s expulsion from the villages where he had worked for years, meetings took place between Nesterenko and the two ETHOS managers. The two men declared themselves willing to collaborate with Belrad in a joint project that would be presented to the European Commission (the TACIS programme)119. During one of these discussions in their hotel room in Minsk, they intimated to Nesterenko that he would have to cut off relations with Professor Fernex if he wanted to work in collaboration with them. They were forced to back down when Nesterenko interrupted the conversation and made for the door.

  119 Telephone conversation between W. Tchertkoff and J. Lochard on 8th February 2001 and during a meeting in Minsk in June 2001.

  In reality, ETHOS, with CORE already in preparation, was shirking its responsibilities. Nesterenko had written to them, in fact, at the beginning of April 2001:

  At our meeting on 17 April, I propose that we examine the possibility of:

  1. re-establishing the 20 LRMCs which were closed down in schools in the Stolin district, with the financial support of ETHOS (cost of equipment for one LRMC is 1800–2000 dollars and the cost of running one LRMC is about 900 dollars a year);

  2. re-establishing the regular distribution of animal fodder mixed with adsorbents for the cattle of the inhabitants in the 30 villages of the Stolin district, throughout the whole period of lactation;

  3. buying and installing cream separators in school kitchens and nurseries in the 30 villages;

  4. with financial support from CORE, providing pectin prevention (4 times a year) for children in the Stolin district, and undertaking 5–6 annual whole body measurements of these children (annual cost per child, 25 dollars);

  5. organising advanced radiometry courses for 80 teachers and health workers, training them for work in the LRMC and teaching them the principles of radioprotection in schools;

  6. organising a month’s convalescence every year for children of the Stolin district, in French families, as is being done currently in Germany, UK, Ireland, Spain and Italy, in order to restore the health of Belarusian children;

  7. undertaking a three year follow-up of the health status of children in 36 secondary schools, 12 colleges and 12 primary schools of the Stolin district, within the framework of a special international programme.

  I propose a discussio
n of this project for radioprotection of children who are victims of the Chernobyl disaster in the district of Stolin.

  I want the children of the Stolin district to benefit from the genuine, effective radioprotection, that will result from our joint scientific work.

  Nesterenko’s proposals were not discussed at the meeting on 17th April “because the ETHOS team had no new funds to pursue its activities”. In fact, ETHOS was preparing to relaunch its programme of “sustainable management of radiological quality and social confidence” under the new name CORE. This advertising gem, “radiological quality”—the leitmotif of the ETHOS strategy, given renewed prominence in CORE, serves to remove reality, to pass over the essential, to do things but not to do them, to say things but not to say them, and ultimately to cover up the reality. Let me explain.

  An oxymoron, as the dictionary tells us, is a figure of speech in which two words with opposite meanings are put together for greater effect (for example, passive aggressive). But there are more subtle and less innocent operations. Take for example, the well known term greenwash: this is the name given to the clever marketing techniques that are designed to provide an attractive veneer to concepts that are a little jaded or have had a bad press. An image is created of something that is worthwhile and entirely new, which in fact remains fundamentally unchanged. The term “radiological quality” is a good example of this. What is it?

  The radioactivity in the territories contaminated by the nuclear disaster can just as well be good quality or bad quality? A trivialisation, emptied of meaning. Thus artificial radioactivity, in contact with the human organism, poses no problems in itself, but by virtue of its supposed good or bad quality? What “radiological quality” can there be in the “effects of proximity”120? Is there some other meaning that has escaped me in this marketing operation, this greenwash invented by Mutadis-ETHOS-CORE?