The Crime of Chernobyl- The Nuclear Gulag

by Wladimir Tchertkoff

  G. Bandazhevskaya—Yury Bandazhevsky always lived in a dream. During the eighteen months while he was temporarily freed, instead of writing books, he could at least have given me power of attorney for the sale of the house…The night before the trial, I thought that Yury had almost regained the health he had before he was first arrested. In a way he had adapted to his new situation, no longer directing an institute. He wasn’t worried about the investigating judges anymore. He got on with his work, which was what he loves more than anything else. He seemed to have gained a certain level of serenity. And it was in that generally positive spirit that he approached the trial.

  Q—But did he try to intervene during the investigation; to know what the investigating judge was doing, to make requests to official organisations, etc?

  G. Bandazhevskaya—He seemed indifferent to these questions. For example, the lawyer, it was me that chose him. He was completely convinced of his innocence and he was sure that the court would exonerate him. He approached the trial with 100% optimism. He was convinced right up to the very last day that he would prove his innocence. The lawyer and I were present for every session of the hearing. And I thought that he would come and talk to me after each one of these sessions about the way he should construct and organise his defence…During the trial, he was very alert. He asked lots of questions, he noted everything. The rational attitude of a scientist, quite distant in his attitude. He noted all the contradictory statements made by witnesses, but afterwards, he didn’t talk about any of it. He didn’t have total confidence in the lawyer. He was convinced that he should defend himself, and this is what he was doing, as an experiment, as a scientist. The lawyer made a lot of use of the analyses Yury had made during the investigation and the trial, and used them later when he was making his case for the defence.

  Yury was really shaken for the first time when the public prosecutor asked the court for a nine year prison sentence. Suddenly he felt completely undermined. I still remember it now. He was panic-stricken. He had been sure right up to the last moment that the judge would dismiss the case for lack of evidence.

  Chapter III

  THE DESCENT INTO HELL

  Extracts from News from Prison that I disseminated to supporters of Yury Bandazhevsky in the West, while he was in prison.

  1. INITIATION INTO THE PRISONER’S WORLD

  20th JULY 2001 (ONE MONTH AFTER THE VERDICT)

  CONDITIONS IN PRISON

  On the 18th July, after fifteen days in quarantine, during which he had been registered, photographed and submitted to various medical tests, Professor Bandazhevsky was assigned to “Detachment 21” in Minsk prison, at 36 Kalvariyskaya Street.

  A large cell with 80 detainees in bunk beds. He was assigned a top bunk, which meant that he could not sit up to read, as the ceiling was too low: “I write my letters on the toilet”. There are no tables or cupboards of course. He keeps his papers and his books in a bag. Contrary to information received initially, he can receive newspapers and books, by registered mail, with a maximum weight of 2 kg per parcel sent. He can correspond freely, but the process takes a long time because of prison monitoring. A month after his incarceration, Bandazhevsky received his first packet of letters from Belarus, which had all been opened and read. Galina Bandazhevskaya had asked as many people as possible to write to her husband, even if it was just a short note. He reads French and English. All personal messages from the outside world brings him great joy, a balm to a prisoner’s heart.

  Professor Bandazhevsky had only been in prison one day when his wife came to see him. He would be living there for eight years (minus the five and a half months when he was remanded in custody). What do the other prisoners do during the day? Nothing “They fool around”, he said. He thinks that some of them go to work in a furniture factory. These are uneducated people, a bit lacking intellectually, no-one with whom he could have a sustained conversation. But all the detainees, irrespective of their level of intellect, have a lot of common sense and understand the situation perfectly. Nobody is taken in. They understand the reality of the regime. They are freer than the “free”, and relationships with them are excellent. It is the humanity of prison.

  Bandazhevsky continues to devise scientific projects in spite of everything. He is working on an article about a subject that has haunted him ever since he was deprived of his research facilities. He has dictated a list of books to his wife. All the same, she found him disoriented. “I want to concentrate, I still have things to say”, he told her.

  Galina Bandazhevskaya has asked me to pass on to those European Members of Parliament who supported her husband by awarding him a Passport For Freedom193, her request that they write to the prison director asking him to allow Bandazhevsky to continue with his scientific work. Minimal material conditions that would allow him to write, arrange his papers and his books. Galina Bandazhevskaya has also asked that scientists and doctors who supported her husband to write to the Chief Medical Officer of the prison asking him to ensure that he gets the right food because he has an ulcer that bleeds, and to authorise the delivery of several food parcels each year.

  193 See Part Three, Chapter I, p. 169.

  2nd AND 4th OCTOBER 2001

  The mother and the wife of Yury Bandazhevsky were allowed to spend three days with the prisoner, from 28th to the 30th September, in a “hotel room” made available within the prison walls for “extended visits”. They brought him a 30 kg bag of food, which all three had to use up during their three day stay, since no-one is allowed out of the prison to go shopping. The next extended visit will take place in six months time in April; and a normal visit, a conversation by telephone through a glass partition, at the end of November (four months after the preceding one in July).

  Lost among the mass of common criminals, Yury Bandazhevsky feels isolated because he is not like the others. He is finding it hard to adapt, and to find a place within which to draw breath. He veers between, on the one hand, depression and a disoriented state of panic and on the other, a euphoric creativity, when he is overtaken by scientific reflections. But these moments of intense activity, where he finds himself again, are interrupted and come to nothing because of a lack of means: minimal material conditions and a total lack of scientific literature.

  Like all the other prisoners, he wears an all-in-one uniform made of black material with his name on it, his head is shaved and he wears a round black cap. The final insult—it was his wife who had to provide these clothes (the prison didn’t have any). She went round all the shops in Minsk to find them, and ended up getting them from a workman in the building in exchange for half a bottle of vodka. There is a tiny television in the communal cell but it is impossible to get anywhere near it with the mass of other people crowding round.

  Yury Bandazhevsky is a scientist through and through, a sensitive man, polite, and respectful of others. He cannot defend himself physically, stake out his corner. Disoriented, humiliated, clumsy, a fish out of water, “but however humiliated I feel, I would be alright if I could work” he says. He is trying to hold on, but against a background of anguish and depression. His wife has noticed he has a persistent cough, a nervous tic. He has told her, several times, with tears in his eyes: “I won’t be able to hold out here. My nervous system will never adapt”. She is convinced of it. So is the prison officer in charge of Yury who advised her to bring him vitamins and better food, “otherwise, with this length of prison sentence, his health will begin to deteriorate, first his teeth will fall out, and then the rest”.

  While he was under house arrest in between the two periods of imprisonment, the Bandazhevskys had taken refuge in the hope that the growing support from the West would spare them this ordeal.

  Since Professor Bandazhevsky was sentenced, without appeal, to eight years in prison, no-one talks about the charge against him of extortion or corruption in Belarus. If a journal in official scientific and medical circles mentions him,
it is simply to denigrate his competence as a scientist and to cast doubt on his mental health: “I am a dangerous man” he concludes. The fact is that the people who put him through this shameful trial wanted to break him and to discredit him, and they will succeed in this if he is not released very quickly.

  Concretely

  The governors at the prison have not granted him any special privileges. He is treated exactly the same as all the other prisoners in this type of camp (or penal colony as they are called today). He can go to the library to work, but it is devoid of scientific literature. His wife wanted to bring him a typewriter, but it is not allowed. He has asked his wife to bring him a set of cassettes so that he can learn English. But cassettes are not allowed. The camp administration that receives letters from abroad, keeps saying: “Professor or no professor, in the “zone”, it’s the same for everyone. It is unkind to encourage his illusions. He needs to get used to the idea of eight years. If not he won’t make it”.

  Request for a pardon

  Bandazhevsky’s wife, mother and daughter have all written to the President of Belarus, Lukashenko, to ask for a pardon. They received a reply saying that the presidential administration would consider their demand when Bandazhevsky himself made the request. Yury Bandazhevsky does not intend to repent for a crime he has not committed; he has prepared a letter to Lukashenko in which he claims his innocence and asks the president to exercise his right of pardon to allow him to take up his scientific work again as a free man.

  Professor Nesterenko has learned from the French ambassador that on 16th August 2001, European ambassadors in Minsk approached the Minister of Foreign Affairs on Bandazhevsky’s behalf. They told him that they considered the severity of the sentence to be politically motivated and asked for a presidential pardon, on the grounds of Professor Bandazhevsky’s scientific merit and the lack of any proof against him. They also asked, in the meantime, that the conditions under which he was being held be improved. The Minister said he would refer the question higher, but that no such request had been received by the government from Bandazhevsky himself. The management at the penal colony say that he has not fulfilled the necessary conditions for his request to be transmitted.

  Demand for a retrial.

  The lawyer has prepared a case for the Commission on Human Rights in Geneva and will have it translated into English. The report will be sent as soon as the translation is ready. The same report will be delivered to the Supreme Court in Belarus, in the form of a complaint denouncing the irregularities during the trial and demanding a retrial. The ambassadors’ intervention has, actually, cast doubt on the verdict (“political case”) and constitutes the new fact, the appropriate grounds, for which the lawyer was waiting, to file his complaint. His case is due to be heard at a consultation at the Supreme Court on the 5th November.

  Request for support

  There are two things that are saving Bandazhevsky and protecting: his scientific work and the many letters of friendship and solidarity that he receives, although these have decreased in number recently.

  Professor Bandazhevsky has asked for the following:

  —That Mrs Adi Roche, who received the Frantzisk Skarina medal from Lukashenko for the humanitarian work that she undertakes on behalf of the victims of Chernobyl every year, write to the president of Belarus to ask for his pardon;

  —That each of the signatories to the Passport for Liberty that was awarded to him by the European Parliament—Marie Anne Isler Béguin, Mário Soares, Jacques Santer, José María Gil-Robles Delgado, Michel Rocard, Elizabeth Schroedter, Paul Lannoye, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Ari Vatanen, Fodé Sylla, Thierry Jean-Pierre, Ole Karupp—do the same thing, as well as IPPNW, who awarded him a medal at their 14th International Congress.

  He will send his letter to Lukashenko next week.

  1st DECEMBER 2001

  THE PRESIDENT REFUSES TO PARDON BANDAZHEVSKY

  Professor Bandazhevsky and his mother received a reply from the presidential administration of the president of the Republic of Belarus dated 20th November 2001:

  We are writing to you to say that your request for a pardon for Y.I. Bandazhevsky has been examined and found unsatisfactory due to the fact that he has served so little of his sentence, the seriousness of the crime he committed and the social danger that he represents.

  Signed V.I. Samusev, head of service for citizenship and pardons.

  Bandazhevsky receives about thirty letters every day from all over the world, from strangers expressing their solidarity, their warmth and their friendship. “They keep me alive” he says with gratitude, hoping that they do not stop. He is holding on and prepared to resist during the years to come whatever the cost, knowing that if he gives in psychologically, it would mean the end.

  Apart from his use of the library where he can read and write during the day, his conditions are the same as those of the other prisoners. His wife had asked that his diet be adapted because of his ulcer. After an examination by endoscopy, this was refused because the ulcer was “healing”. In the cell, with its concrete floor, where between 80 and 100 prisoners sleep on three-tiered bunk beds, the rats fight over scraps of food. The tiny television set, which at least shed some light on the outside world, is broken.

  Bandazhevsky suffers most from the lack of information and not being able to work as a doctor and researcher. He longs for intellectual activity, for research, for creative exchanges. His wife is not confident that after several years of this existence, Yury’s spirit will remain so lively and clear. In the meantime, he had the idea of setting up a science experiment that had greatly interested some of those employed by the penitentiary (inmates selected by the management). They grow plants in pots in which the earthworms are multiplying. Earthworms, like humans, like tea. Bandazhevsky suggested they test the possible toxicity of various different teas (green, black…) by pouring the used tea leaves into the pots, and then observing the vitality of the worms. The young research apprentices of the gulag were enthusiastic about the idea. This is how the man that Professor Nesterenko considered deserving of a Nobel prize is passing his time. He would like to work in the prison’s clinic but that was refused: he is a prisoner like everyone else, in a “maximum security” prison.

  12th MARCH 2002

  LETTER FROM GALINA BANDAZHEVSKAYA

  “On 10th January I was allowed a brief visit to my husband in the maximum security penal colony. “A short visit” means a meeting with the prisoner that takes place on the telephone through a glass partition. It is true that this time the telephone was not working and we were forced to communicate with gestures and shouts. But this is not the worst of what we have endured recently, and these minor inconveniences are accepted as completely normal.

  Yury is doing everything he can to cope. He continues with his work, despite the conditions in which he finds himself. He is allowed to visit the library where a place has been reserved for him to work. He works a lot of the time, and the lighting is not that good and it is affecting his eyesight. It is possible that his eyesight is worsening also because of the stress he has been under. I could be mistaken, of course; it could simply be a question of age.

  To improve his work conditions, he absolutely must have access to a computer, even if this access is limited and subject to certain restrictions. We are in the 21st century and even in prison some exception should be made for a scientist. His research is not a whim. It is important. Asking for a computer is not like asking for a softer bed, a room of his own, or an improved diet. It is an indispensable tool for a scientist. In any case, work is not forbidden in the colony! And the court did not strip him of his title as a scientist. He must be allowed to work, to have access to a computer, even if it is under the watchful eye of a warden, on certain days, or at certain times. The lawyers say that we need to insist, to make demands, and then perhaps we will be heard.

  The lawyer from the Helsinki Committee in Belarus, G.P
. Pogonyailo, is still working on the letter of appeal to the UN (Commission on Human Rights). The work is complex and arduous. The most important thing is that the letter of appeal be presented in a way that meets the Commission’s requirements.

  A few words now about the research at our institute (At this time, Galina was still working at the institute founded by her husband in Gomel. Author’s note) We received a visit from a delegation of scientists from the university of Nagasaki to conclude a contract of cooperation between the medical centres in our two cities, both victims of nuclear technology—the atomic bomb and the accident. The current rector at the Institute of Medicine, who is actually a professor, a doctor and a research scientist, asked the Japanese what subjects the doctors and scientists should be studying at Gomel, what work they should be undertaking to understand the impact of Chernobyl on people’s health! At the moment, the researchers at the institute are studying anything as long as it is not the effect of caesium-137 on the human organism.

  Two months have gone by since our last meeting with Yury. We received authorisation for an extended visit from 8th to 10th March. We are entitled to two of these visits each year. They last three days. They are of course essential for us to discuss things, to lift his morale, renew his strength and his faith in the future. This time, he arrived for the visit a bit ill. The flu epidemic spread to his dormitory and he caught it, but I think he only had a mild form. Within three days he felt a little better. He was quite sombre and depressed but the publication of his book, thanks to Nesterenko, cheered him up. The book is entitled Pathological processes in the organism in the presence of incorporated radionuclides. His faith in science and the feeling that he is helping people gives him strength. He very much wanted all the scientific data that he collected over his nine years of research in the Gomel region (and it is an enormous amount of material) to be used by doctors and scientists who care about the health of the people living in such dangerous ecological conditions, contaminated by radionuclides. That is why he is doing everything to publish his material even at the expense of his strength and health.