At Gomel, they tried to break me. I had no idea what was going on around me, or where I was. Later on, I learnt a lot from the other prisoners that were put in my cell from time to time. They had up to date news, they had links to the outside world. They told me: “Everyone’s talking about you. The whole business has caused a big outcry”. I was given newspapers and there was a lot of information about me in them. They had arrived in mid summer with pullovers to lie on, but I was sleeping on the floor with nothing. I put the newspapers under my head. It was cold at night, so I covered myself with newspaper. As a matter of fact, they really keep the heat in. If you ever need to keep warm some day, try newspapers.
When I was transferred to Mogilev, I was put in a holding cell again. I was put into a cell where there was a hardened criminal, whose job it was to look after the other detainees. Huge, terrifying, his face all burnt. It was very late in the evening. I came in. My face must have expressed all the agony I’d gone through. I was feeling really bad. And this man—they were expecting a different reaction from him, he holds out a metal cup of warm water, with little bits of mandarin peel in it. “Take it, it’s cracknel”, that’s the word he uses for a biscuit. I’m so touched, I’m near tears. Imagine the man I am at that moment… First, I’ve been locked away, without charge, then transported in handcuffs across town in broad daylight. Accused, interrogated. Then I’m transferred again. It all starts again. I’m transferred to another town. I don’t know anything. I see my wife running towards me: my family has seized the opportunity to see me, they’re crying, banging on the car with their hands when I’m taken away. My daughter crying “Be strong, Daddy!” You see, I can’t even talk about it now. It just makes me cry. It was hard… And then they put me into a cell with a guy like that. And he gives me…I began to cry. Nothing else I could do. They realised their little manoeuvre had backfired and they took him away the next day.
But the third day, I couldn’t get up. I had already lost so…. You only get one meal a day there. And my ulcer had probably opened up again… I couldn’t get up. My cell mate started to bang on the door. I must have fainted or something, because the next thing I knew, I was outside. A woman had died in there recently. They were worried. They got me out into the fresh air. Uniformed police were talking amongst themselves: “We need to get him to hospital. If he dies here, there’ll be problems”. They brought me some more food and they called an ambulance. The doctor at the emergency department in Mogilev thought I couldn’t stay there. They took me to the regional hospital in Mogilev. There, people’s attitudes varied, different doctors, different attitudes. But in the majority of cases, I was treated humanely. They were really kind, really friendly. I stayed there a little over a week, and they looked after me very well. Then, the same members of staff from Gomel came to get me and took me to the central hospital in Minsk, where they continued to care for me.
—Did they know who you were, in Mogilev?
—Everyone knew, obviously
—Through the newspapers?
—Of course. Everyone knew. The regional hospital in Minsk is part of the same public health system. “Rector of the institute, professor”, everyone knew perfectly well who I was. I was touched by the attention they gave me, by the simple humanitarian care for my health, for my fate. Even if they were just following the procedures regarding prisoners… That’s what I was, after all—a prisoner. Perhaps it was because I was so seriously ill. No-one beat me there. The people who transferred me on these various visits treated me completely normally...
—But they put people in your cell who offered you advice?
—Not just advice. All this is well known. I don’t want to talk about it. What’s the point of talking about it? But I just want to say that there’s no doubt about it, I was being monitored very closely right from the start. I have no doubt about that.
—You told me that you always understood why you’d been arrested and why, out of the blue, despite your high position within society, you found yourself in prison
—I know now and I knew then that it was a very well planned operation, I understood that perfectly. Because I had already seen the denunciation against me…
—Even before?
—I had seen the denunciation a few hours before I was arrested. People who respected me and knew that I was an honest person showed it to me. A written denunciation. I know what it says word for word. I was described in the worst possible terms. They wanted to classify me as a declared enemy of the state. They tried to show that I was a criminal. They tried to persuade me and even said: “Confess!” At different levels…they placed me with people whose job it was to try to convince me. But when I was put in the Volodarka prison in Minsk, I have to say that they followed all procedures correctly. They respected me there…
There are two distinct worlds. At Gomel I was a prisoner. They handcuffed me, during transfers across town, in broad daylight, so that everyone would see me wearing handcuffs. They push you, push in front of you, push you into the prison van. Whereas in Minsk, I have no complaints. The conditions…of course, a prison is a prison. But their behaviour was very correct and they respected my psychological wellbeing.
—Did the guards know about you, did they know who you were?
In Minsk, no-one hid the fact that they were sympathetic to my situation. All these lads who accompanied me showed me great respect. They even said: “This is the Professor’s cell”. Or when we went out, they would ask “How is your health, Yury Ivanovich?” “Do you know me?” “Everyone knows you!”
And when I left, I said goodbye as if they were… maybe not family, but… In any case, I understood: they were doing their job, I understood completely. They wished me luck, all the best. They waved to me as I left. In general, wherever I went during this period, I found a common bond with everyone.
—What explains the hatred for you at Gomel?
—I think it was encouraged by certain people. Even though there were people who could have… helped me. They could have come forward and said: “We’ve known him for many years, he came here when he was 33…”
—Is it because these people have been terrorised for decades?
—No. I’m talking about high ranking officials. They invited me there, they promised to support me. They thanked my parents, my mother, for the fact that I had come to Gomel, for setting up the institute… My point of view was this: as long as these very young children and other people are here, they are going to need continual medical attention. I believe this absolutely. A doctor should be concerned with people’s health at all times. I can’t accept any other viewpoint. That’s why I came…Certainly not in order to become a high ranking official. For the love of God! I’ve never been a part of the hierarchy. I am a typical research scientist... I threw myself into it. But quite obviously, I had a lot to learn about life, at the time—from a tactical point of view. I had no instinct for self-preservation, and even now, it’s not particularly well-developed. The form of self-preservation I have at the moment is almost pathological.
—It saved the scientist in you.
—You’re right, if I had any instinct for self-preservation, I would not be a scientist.
Chapter V
MINZDRAV SENDS
AN ULTIMATUM TO NESTERENKO
Minzdrav is the Russian acronym for the Ministry of Health (ministerstvo zdravookhranenia).
In July 2000, worried about the increasingly bad news that has been arriving from Minsk over the previous three months, I write to Madame Daillant, who works for Amnesty International in France and has responsibility for Belarus.
There is bad news from Belarus.
The Minister of Health, Zelenkevich, has sent an ultimatum to Nesterenko: the independent institute, Belrad, will have to cease operations if it does not receive authorisation from the very people who want it closed. The Minister has invented the notion that measuring the levels of radionu
clides accumulated within the bodies of children is a medical act, and as such needs authorisation from him. It is false and it is absurd, as has been shown by the international scientific experts whose opinion was sought by the Minister in charge of Emergency Situations, who, unlike Zelenkevich, supports Nesterenko. It makes no difference. His situation is precarious. The question of whether or not Belrad may continue to work freely, is not yet settled.
It is the civil servants and the doctors at the Ministry of Health, supporters of the IAEA’s position in Vienna, who are hostile to Nesterenko and Bandazhevsky. They deny the seriousness of the health consequences caused by Chernobyl, do not recognise the correlation between radioactive contamination and the various illnesses described by Professor Bandazhevsky, and they publish reassuring data, that is systematically proved wrong by the bulletins sent by Nesterenko, three times a year, to all national and local government bodies. Bandazhevsky and Nesterenko are a threat to their policy of non-assistance to populations in danger, a policy that in another context would lead to prosecutions. It is these people that Bandazhevsky criticised in his famous report about the 17 billion roubles of government funds, in which he claimed that the money had been misspent, and this is probably the reason for his arrest. Professor Kenigsberg, the vice-director of the institute that was in charge of the work, was incriminated by Bandazhevsky and named personally as the director of projects that were allocated 3.35 billion roubles. He is a member of the group that has ordered Nesterenko to cease his activities. Kenigsberg refers frequently and quite openly to the IAEA to back up his theses.
Nesterenko is faced with a choice: either he complies, closes his institute and throws all his colleagues out into the street, or he continues with his work and fight back. Conscious of his rights and knowing the vital importance of his work, he will fight back. In fact, he has no choice: if he submitted, he would be sanctioning the ban on research and on informing the population (surely this is a question of human rights which the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and Amnesty International also defend?)
Nesterenko has no financial reserves to draw on if he suspends his work temporarily. He works under contract for charitable organisations in the West. The American MacArthur foundation, that has supported him for several years, has made a payment of 100,000 dollars for an ongoing project. Nesterenko does not touch this money other than when work has been completed, and sends them bills on a regular basis. He has to continue in order to pay his staff. At present he is working at Minsk airport: he is measuring levels of radioactivity in children’s bodies before they leave to go on holiday, invited by charities abroad and he measures the levels again when they return to calculate the amount of radionuclides that have been eliminated from their bodies and to continue preventive treatment. He is on a knife edge. The police could be called in and equipment seized… Is he going the same route as Bandazhevsky?
Nesterenko has written to the Prime Minister and to President Lukashenko, with whom he has requested an audience. Tomorrow, he will meet the Ambassador Hans Georg Wieck, director of OSCE in Belarus, who has been alerted by Professor Michel Fernex via the director (a Swiss national) from the general headquarters of OSCE in Warsaw.
Given what is at stake, this case should be followed closely. These two scientists are alone in having the courage to divulge what those who should know, and in fact do know perfectly well, deny. (They may not understand every precise detail but they know enough to know that they are lying). All kinds of human rights are being violated here: the right to information, to health, to dignity, to life and to death…and it is not only the peasant population of Belarus whose rights are being denied.
I am in contact with Professor Nesterenko and I will keep you up to date with the situation.
12th July 2000
1. THE FACTS
Following the expert opinion offered by Nesterenko, Bandazhevsky and Stozharov, the Ministry of Health in Belarus is obliged to withdraw the government’s 1998 proposed register and rewrite it. The three scientists recommend that the register be established on the basis of direct measurements of the inhabitants using a human radiation spectrometer (HRS), rather than on mathematical deductions based on a dozen samples of milk and potatoes from the contaminated villages.
On 20th April 2000, in an interview on Belarusian television with the president of the parliamentary commission on the problems following the disaster at Chernobyl, Nesterenko criticises the dangerously high levels of caesium-137 permitted in food products (Republic of Belarus admissible levels of contamination—ALC 99). He also criticises the method used to establish the new 1998–1999 register of doses as “indirect, archaic and fallacious, using a limited non-representative selection of milk and potato samples instead of direct human body measurements which results in an underestimation by a factor of 3 to 16 of the true radioactive load of inhabitants of contaminated areas”.
The next morning, 21st April, a three-person commission from the Ministry of Health arrives at the Belrad institute with an injunction from the Minister, Zelenkevich to ban the HRS measurements, on the grounds that it is, supposedly, a medical procedure, and Belrad does not possess the requisite licence from the Minister of Health. Nesterenko, whose work is actually in physics, not medicine, has the required licence from the Minister of Emergency Situations (MES). Nesterenko writes an indignant letter to President Lukashenko complaining that the Ministry of Health is acting illegally. The MES is asked to intervene and sort out the conflict.
On 16th May, the MES convenes an international group of experts including Professor Michel Fernex, Bella Belbéoch (France), Alexei Yablokov (Russia), Ludmila Porokhniak-Ganovskaya (Ukraine), and Natalie Kolomietz (Belarus). Professor Fernex and the physicist Belbéoch would also write to President Lukashenko. The scientists confirm unanimously that the use of a Human Radiation Spectrometer (HRS) for measuring, constitutes a physical and not a medical procedure. However, an extremely tense correspondence continues between the Ministry of Health and Nesterenko, about both administrative and scientific matters.
On 5th July, the Ministry of Health, in reply to Nesterenko’s objections, sends him an ultimatum, and orders departmental directors of local health authorities to stop any radioprotection programmes that were being carried out with the Belrad institute on the basis of agreements that had been signed previously.
MINUTES
From the June 2000 meeting “The medical nature
of the work being undertaken by the Belrad institute using
human radiation spectrometers”
Agenda: The medical nature of the work undertaken by the Belrad institute using human radiation spectrometers.
1. Deputy Minister’s report A.S. Kurchenkov.
2. Contributions from Y.E. Kenigsberg, V.F. Minenko, L.S. Meleshko, V.I. Trusilo, G.V. Godovalnikov, V.I. Ternov.
All the contributors expressed the opinion that the work involving the measurement of the population using HRS machines undertaken by Belrad constitutes a medical intervention.
In the execution of a directive from the Minister of Health of the Republic of Belarus I.B.Zelenkevich, the commission, set up within the Republican Unitary Enterprise “Center for Expertise and Testing in Health Care”, in May this year, monitored the use of HRS machines by the “Belrad” institute:
Belrad does not have the requisite documents from the Minister of Health of Belarus for the use of Human Radiation Spectrometers—in other words for a medical intervention, nor documents certifying that these machines have been registered with the Minister of Health.
3. After deliberation, we have decided:
3.1 Belrad must cease these examinations of the population until it has obtained authorisation from the Minister of Health.
3.2. Directors of public health departments of the regional executive committees and the executive committee of public health in Minsk must cease the work they currently undertake that is
based on agreements made with Belrad.
Meeting secretary
Y.P. Platunov
On 17th July 2000, Nesterenko reminds the Minister of the existing rules and regulations:
May I remind you that, in conformity with the statute of the Academy of Sciences of which I am a member—a statute ratified by the Republic of Belarus Council of Ministers—all ministers and administrations are obliged to respond in depth to questions posed by members of the Academy.
And he responds by refusing to obey the illegal injunction to cease Belrad’s activities:
The assertion that HRS measurements constitute a medical intervention has no basis in law. It is simply the opinion expressed by those present at the meeting and has no legal force.
There is no mention of the use of HRS machines in the law “Judicial regime in the areas contaminated by radionuclides from the Chernobyl disaster”, nor in the Council of Minister’s decree No. 386 of 16th October 1991, nor in the list of activities for which a licence from the Ministry of Health is required (ratified by the Republic of Belarus Council of Ministers No. 456 of 21st August 1995)
In consequence, the legislation currently in force does not view the use of HRS machines as an activity requiring a licence from the Minister of Health of the Republic of Belarus.
The Belrad institute does not accept the decision to cease measurements taken using a HRS machine.
The Crime of Chernobyl- The Nuclear Gulag Page 30
