Activists: Belarus ignoring dangers of Chernobyl radiation :: Charter'97 :: News

The signs say ``KEEP OUT`` and warn of radiation contamination, but the mushroom pickers trudge past them carrying their pails. Eighteen years after the reactor at Chernobyl in neighboring Ukraine exploded, spewing a cloud of radiation that blew north and contaminated 22 percent of this ex-Soviet republic, activists warn of a new threat facing Belarusians: the longing to return to normal life.

The government -- and many Belarusians -- are eager to put the world`s worst nuclear accident behind them. President Alexander Lukashenko has made it a priority to repopulate much of the Chernobyl-infected region beyond the hardest-hit areas.

But opposition parties and advocacy groups such as the Belarus-based Children of Chernobyl accuse the government of overriding warnings that radiation continues to contaminate the region.

Poor return home

Belarusians, many of them poor and ill-informed about radiation, are returning home to villages that require permanent monitoring because of higher than average radiation levels. Tractors till farmland, cows graze and residents fill their yards with vegetable gardens. Others are venturing into the ``exclusion zones`` -- the worst-hit areas -- to forage in forests for berries and wild mushrooms, which are then sold.

Critics say the government of this tightly controlled nation of 10 million is capitalizing on the plight of desperate job seekers to repopulate still-dangerous areas and boost agricultural production.

In the last five years, Belarus has removed 1,000 population centers from the danger list. It has boosted regional farm production by 30 percent, cut Chernobyl-related welfare funding from 14 percent of the $3 billion annual budget to 4 percent, and censored data on rising death and cancer rates, opponents say.

``We must now worry about the children of the children of Chernobyl,`` said Gennady Groushevoy, head of Children of Chernobyl. ``The health danger is reaching into a second generation . . . but the government has retreated into a Soviet-era attitude of silence.``

7 million affected

In all, 7 million people in the former Soviet republics of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine are thought to have suffered medical problems as a result of the April 25, 1986, accident. In Ukraine, more than 2.32 million people, including 452,000 children, have been treated for radiation-linked illnesses, including thyroid and blood cancer, according to Ukrainian health officials.

Most villages around the plant remain off-limits today, though some Ukrainians are moving back.

Sixty percent of the fallout landed over Belarus, contaminating a region that was home to more than 1.5 million people. About 125,000 families were evacuated, and large swaths of forest and farmland were declared ``exclusion zones,`` sealed by checkpoints.

``I don`t feel any danger, and even if I did -- what would it matter?`` said Raisa Stradayeva, 62, as she and her grandson Andrusha trudged home in Svetilovichi, a village just outside the exclusion zone.

``I have to live somewhere, and this is my home.``