The Crime of Chernobyl- The Nuclear Gulag

by Wladimir Tchertkoff

  —Do you get out of breath?

  —No, it just hurts my heart if I run a lot.

  A little girl, wearing a pretty red dress, is sitting among the other children.

  —And what about you?

  The little girl in red.—I’ve got a heart murmur too. I didn’t have any pain before... (The doctor looks at her kindly.)

  —This little girl has alterations to her heart rhythm. She has to have treatment.

  —Is it normal that they have the same illnesses as adults?

  —No, certainly not. All we can say is that our ideas about the age at which these illnesses appear has changed substantially. Many illnesses that only appeared in adults before are appearing in children. (She beckons to a boy to come forward.) This boy has a serious congenital malformation of the heart. There’s no doubt that he will need serious treatment, and surgery. (The boy looks at her with his blue eyes and a little frown, without understanding the seriousness of what she is saying.) Where are you from?

  —I live at Stradubka, in Loev province.

  —That’s far from Gomel? (His brother, who is sitting next to him and also has a heart anomaly, answers for him).

  The brother.—About 50 km from Gomel.

  —Part of that area is contaminated. They’ve got their problems there as well…

  —Do you use spectrometers to measure the children to see if their organisms are contaminated?

  —We can’t do that at this hospital. In areas that are strictly monitored, there are mobile laboratories and the children who live there are measured. But not all our regions fall into this category.

  The children go out. The doctor approaches a boy who is sitting alone in a corner, looks at him and gently takes his hand and accompanies him outside.

  In another room, near the neonatal resuscitation unit, four young mothers are looking after their babies.

  2. THE YOUNG MOTHERS

  The first mother.—It’s a neurological diagnosis. He has spasms in his arms. They say it’s congenital… But what is it really?

  Q.—Which area are you from?

  —We’re from here, in Gomel.

  —How do they explain it?

  —They say there was insufficient oxygen during the pregnancy, or its hereditary… or else the ecology.

  —Chernobyl?

  —Maybe that as well, because…Maybe that as well.

  —Have you been measured with a Human Radiation Spectrometer? Do you know what levels you had?

  —Ah, yes, radioactive accumulation. Oh that was a long time ago. I was 10. That was the only time I was measured. No-one does that any more. I had more than 10,000 becquerels (about 330 Bq/kg body weight)

  —How long have you been here?

  —This is the fourth week. He looks a bit better. They seem to have got him back to normal. We’re leaving tomorrow.

  The second mother.—With us, it’s the kidneys. They said it’s something congenital. I had problems with my kidneys too.

  —How old were you at the time of the Chernobyl accident?

  —I was little. I was born in 1976, so I was 10. We went out walking, we went to the beach, everywhere. Sunbathing, swimming.

  —Is it a girl?

  —It’s a boy. Vladik. He’s a bit better now… He’s eating, he’s growing. For the moment…Tfu! Tfu! Tfu! (She makes a gesture to dispel the evil spirits.)

  The third mother.—Mine is a little girl, Svetlana. She has infantile hepatitis. Now it seems that everything is normal, we’re going to be sent home soon.

  —Where were you when Chernobyl exploded?

  —Here.

  —How old were you?

  —I was 9.

  —Did they evacuate the children en masse from Gomel? Were you evacuated?

  —No, we went to my mother’s parents.

  —Was that decision made by the family?

  —Yes, when we knew more about what had happened.

  —Did you learn about it late on?

  —Of course. We finished school in May.

  —Did they measure you?

  —I’m trying to remember… They came to our area to measure, they dug up the soil. There was definitely something, but I can’t remember now. They certainly made measurements. I know that I often had bronchial pneumonia. But was it linked?… Yes, I was ill very often, during that year. I was on the hospital list because it was so frequent. I don’t know what caused it.

  —When was she born, your baby?

  —She will be a month old tomorrow.

  —Well, best of luck!

  —Thank you.

  The fourth mother. (she is rocking her baby in her arms).—I was 15 at the time of the accident.

  —Do you remember it?

  —Of course! At the beginning, when it first happened we were playing outside, no-one knew anything. We went on the May Day march, because it was kept secret from us.

  —Were you at Gomel?

  —No I’m from Mosyr. It’s very close to the zone. It’s 90 km from Chernobyl, as the crow flies.

  —Did anyone measure your levels of contamination at the time?

  —They may have taken our measurements but no-one said anything to us.

  —Is it a boy or a girl?

  —A boy.

  —What is wrong with him?

  —According to the doctors, it’s because I was infected. My immune system has been weakened. During the pregnancy there were no complications, but the baby was born with a malformation…He has septicaemia and purulent meningitis. It’s congenital.

  —And you think there’s a connection to Chernobyl.

  —They say that the immune system has been weakened. It’s congenital. 80% of women are affected currently. They told me that at the maternity hospital in Mosyr, 30% of new born babies have to be resuscitated…

  —We know that a weakened immune system is one of the effects of Chernobyl.

  —The doctors have more up to date information about it… The women who are infected don’t even know and don’t know that their child will be ill. Whatever the analyses show.

  —All these mothers were young girls at the time of the accident?

  —Yes, yes. At Mosyr the director of the maternity hospital said that out of 600 new born babies, 230 had to be resuscitated. This is what our children are like. I am from there. (She looks at her baby as she rocks him in her arms.)

  —How is he now?

  —Thank God, for the moment… Thank God!

  The Ministries of Health in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia refuse to make the link between the internal radioactivity of these children and the illnesses that are appearing in hospitals. If they were to do so, and if the correlation proved by Bandazhevsky between caesium-137 and its negative effects on vital organs were to be systematically verified, which would require measurement using a spectrometer, more effective prevention measures could be taken to avoid the worrying increase in new illnesses in children in the contaminated regions.

  PART SIX

  THE ESTABLISHMENT TURNS A DEAF EAR

  Chapter I

  TWO LETTERS

  TO THE UNITED NATIONS

  Each year, in May, the Ministers of Health from 191 Member States take part in the World Health Assembly of the WHO in Geneva. Every year, NGOs urge the Ministers of Health in their own countries to revise the agreement signed in 1959 between the IAEA and the WHO that prevents the latter from fulfilling its role in the area of radiation. And every year, the WHO assembly turns a deaf ear.

  On 12th February 2001, for the umpteenth time, the ritual was repeated; two anti-nuclear organisations, Contratom from Switzerland and CRIIRAD from France, held a press conference in front of the Palais des Nations, in Geneva, at which a number of questions159 were posed to the Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and the Director-General
of WHO at the time, Mme Gro Harlem Brundtland. We filmed the official handover of the letters to two high ranking UN officials.

  159 The questions were:

  —Why did it take five years following the disaster for the World Health Organisation to visit the Chernobyl area, begin studies and offer any help?

  —Why did three WHO delegates approve the decision, in June 1989, to revise upwards by a factor of two or three the acceptable level of radioactive contamination in the Soviet Union thus condemning hundreds of thousands of people to live in contaminated territories?

  —Why, following Chernobyl, did WHO not continue to prioritise research into “genomic effects”, as its own study group had recommended (1957) instead of “mouth dryness and dental caries”?

  —Why have the proceedings from the international WHO conference which brought together 700 doctors in Geneva (20th November 1995) on the theme “The health consequences of Chernobyl”, that were promised for March 1996, not yet been published?

  —Why has WHO not intervened in the European project authorising the presence of radioactive substances in our food?

  —Why is WHO absent from the crucial debate about the safety thresholds for contaminated materials from the decommissioning of nuclear installations that could be recycled into our environment?

  —Why has WHO never intervened to prevent industry and governments from using and releasing into the environment so-called “depleted” uranium, which is toxic both chemically and radiologically?

  —Why has WHO waited until 1st February 2001 to “launch a four to five year research programme, costing 22 million dollars” into the effects of depleted uranium in Iraq and in the Balkans, while the Americans published a report in 1990, available to the press, proving that it is an extremely dangerous radioactive material which is “politically unacceptable”?

  —Why has WHO said nothing about the use of depleted uranium weapons that condemns the populations in areas that have been bombed to live the rest of their lives in a contaminated environment?

  Here is the substance of the letter addressed to Kofi Annan:

  After reading the moving words that you wrote in the forward to the 2000 OCHA report on Chernobyl, we would like to respond to your appeal and make our contribution to awakening public awareness of the consequences of the disaster.

  […] Today, we have seen the immeasurable damage that the nuclear industry can cause to humanity and to the environment—damage that will last for generation upon generation, bequeathing to them the job of cleaning up our waste for thousands of years into the future.

  The time has come for WHO to break free of the unnatural constraints that tie it to the IAEA, whose official role is to promote the use of commercial nuclear technology […] On subjects as worrying for the future of our planet as Chernobyl, low dose radiation and the growing use of depleted uranium for civilian and military purposes, the whole world expects WHO to be able to express itself freely, on the basis of irreproachable scientific research, and to act in accordance with its constitution.

  The undersigned ask that you take steps immediately to ensure that the WHO regains total independence.

  In demanding the amendment of the 1959 agreement with the IAEA, the letter to Dr Brundtland stated:

  The organisation that you have the honour to direct is no longer able to fulfil its Constitution, that requires it to assist in developing an informed public opinion on the effects of the nuclear industry on people’s health and the health of future generations. The time has come, for WHO to break […]

  At the Place des Nations, a former associate of WHO delivered his own personal testimony to the journalists present.

  Professor Michel Fernex.—My links with WHO are as a colleague, who worked for fifteen years in tropical medicine. I was a member of the Steering Committee on Tropical Diseases Research into malaria and filariasis and I hold the organisation in great esteem. But since 1986, I have felt extremely saddened by WHO’s absence for five years from the Chernobyl territory, and by its premature departure from Chernobyl, after only a few years of research that began in 1991.

  WHO’s creation in 1946, which aimed to provide health for all was a magnificent achievement. Its primary function, set out in its constitution, was to act as the directing and co-ordinating authority on international health work. It is doubtless for that reason that for five years WHO was absent from Chernobyl. WHO left the IAEA to do the research in its place. WHO should have initiated and guided research, provided information, given advice, offered assistance in the area of health and finally,—and it did not do this either—assisted in “developing an informed public opinion among all peoples on matters of health”.

  With regard to this matter, it would be interesting to know what went on in the building just behind us, on the other side of the square. WHO tried to inform public opinion in 1995. 50 years after Hiroshima and 10 years after Chernobyl, the Director-General at the time, Hiroshi Nakajima, brought together 700 doctors and scientists, in this building. It was very interesting conference because a great variety of opinions were expressed. For example, a UN representative told us, in the first session, that 9 million people had been exposed to radiation as a result of Chernobyl. This was a Mr Griffith, if I remember correctly. When I say “if I remember correctly”, it’s because I took notes. The proceedings of this conference, which had been promised for March 1996, have still not been published. They have not been published because WHO signed an agreement with the IAEA that no information should be published that might harm the nuclear industry. We have been asking for a long time, and more recently have asked in writing, for an explanation for the delay of five years. We have not received a reply. It’s a real shame. The reason I am here is to ask WHO to amend Articles I, II and VII of the agreement160, to put an end to this handicap and regain its freedom in the scientific and medical domain.

  160 According to Articles I § 2, “…it is recognized by the World Health Organization that the International Atomic Energy Agency has the primary responsibility for encouraging, assisting and co-ordinating research on, and development and practical application of, atomic energy for peaceful uses throughout the world…” Article 1 § 3 states that “Whenever either organization proposes to initiate a programme or activity on a subject in which the other organization has or may have a substantial interest, the first party shall consult the other with a view to adjusting the matter by mutual agreement”.

  According to Article III, “The International Atomic Energy Agency and the World Health Organization recognize that they may find it necessary to apply certain limitations for the safeguarding of confidential information furnished to them. They therefore agree that nothing in this agreement shall be construed as requiring either of them to furnish such information as would, in the judgement of the party possessing the information, constitute a violation of the confidence of any of its Members or anyone from whom it has received such information or otherwise interfere with the orderly conduct of its operations”..

  According to Article VII, “…the International Atomic Energy Agency and the World Health Organization undertake… to avoid undesirable duplication between them with respect to the collection, compilation and publication of statistics, to consult with each other on the most efficient use of information, resources, and technical personnel in the field of statistics and in regard to all statistical projects dealing with matters of common interest”.

  Q.—What significance is there in the fact that Dr Hiroshi Nakajima, Dr Brundtland’s predecessor, will be the honorary president at the next WHO conference in Kiev?

  Fernex.—It allows me to hope that the censorship of the proceedings imposed after the WHO conference in Geneva in 1995, will perhaps—I say perhaps—be lifted at the next conference. I have confidence in Dr Brundtland, the new Director General, and believe that she will not allow censorship. I am putting all my hopes on it. But th
e IAEA will be there too, don’t be under any illusions. UNSCEAR, the IAEA, they have a fantastic amount of money. Buying a scientist from a poor country costs them nothing. With $10,000 you can buy many people...And meanwhile they remove Nesterenko, from the centres that he runs. It’s monstrous. I was speaking on the telephone to the people from ETHOS, who are chasing him out of the villages he works in, and I said that aid to poor countries should always be used to strengthen local structures. Do you know what they said? “Yes, that’s what we think. When we leave there will be nothing left”. I told them “When you leave, if you give your support to Nesterenko, there will be a stronger structure. If you get rid of him, there really will be nothing”.

  I have only met Kofi Annan on a few occasions and in general from afar, at meetings and conferences. But I am struck by the fact that he attends pacifist and anti-nuclear NGO conferences. He goes out into the field. So he is someone who lives among the people, and he respects the NGOs. There’s no doubt that he is a man of great sensitivity. And for someone sensitive, the suffering of the hundreds of thousands of children around Chernobyl, is not just a news item, not just a statistic, but a reality that must be followed up. He showed real wisdom when he said that fifteen years after Chernobyl, we had not seen anything yet—that the real problems would begin in years to come and that we should be very circumspect today. Kofi Annan upset UNSCEAR, whose report basically said “Erase it all, forget it all”. That is the IAEA’s role. It pays people to cover up the truth. But the truth is beginning to appear. What is the latency period for a solid cancer? A minimum of ten years. So all the research needed to be stopped after ten years.

  Q.—To talk about future generations requires expertise.

  Fernex.—WHO has this expertise. There have been plenty of scientific experts who have warned them of this, provided them with information. The Nobel Prize winners in 1957, the Nobel Prize winners this year. Why has WHO not brought in Jeffris? Why have they not called on Dubrova from Moscow? It would not cost them very much money. Why do they not ask Goncharova from Belarus, Ellgren from Sweden? Why? Why have these people, who were brought together in 1956, and published in 1957, all very highly qualified scientists, not been consulted by WHO? In 1986 a committee of experts should have been brought together. That did not happen. It was five years before WHO appeared at Chernobyl! Do you know what was going on during those five years? Just take as an example, infant mortality, between the first and the twenty eighth day of life, which increased by 4.8% in Germany. In the contaminated zones, it was more than 8%. But in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, it went unnoticed because WHO was absent.