Chernobyl exposé scientist is jailed
Peter Conradi

Lukashenko: dodging truth
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A LEADING Belarussian scientist who tried to highlight the disastrous effects of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster on the health of the country's children has been sentenced to eight years in a labour camp.

The jailing of Yuri Bandazhevsky, the former dean of the medical institute in the southern city of Gomel, appears to be part of a  long-running campaign by President Alexander Lukashenko to play down the consequences of the world's worst nuclear accident.

Lukashenko presides over arguably Europe's most repressive regime. Reviled in the West, he was accused by two top former officials last week of helping to set up a death squad blamed for the disappearance of four opposition politicians in the past two years.

Bandazhevsky was convicted by a military court, ostensibly of taking bribes in exchange for college admission. He denied the corruption charge but, under Belarussian law, has no right of appeal. His family fears for his health as jail food is virtually inedible and he is receiving no medical attention for a stomach ulcer.

Amnesty International and other human rights groups monitoring the case said his conviction was linked to work aimed at establishing the full extent of damage caused by Chernobyl.

Human rights campaigners say the catalyst for Bandazhevsky's arrest was a study of children close to Gomel, 80 miles northeast of the Chernobyl plant. It found that 80% of children who had been exposed to the highest levels of radiation had irregular heart rhythms and other cardiac disorders which, in many cases, proved fatal.

"He has been breaking new ground," said Solange Fernex, a former French MEP and head of a group campaigning against the conviction. "Nobody has been able to carry out the number of autopsies he has done to show the effect of radiation on people's organs."

Belarus was especially badly hit by the Chernobyl accident. As much as 23% of the land was contaminated by the radioactive cloud, and some 500,000 children and nearly 2m adults are believed to live in the worst affected areas.

Lukashenko, who took to the streets of Minsk earlier this month on inline skates for Belarus's independence day, ahead of a re-election battle in September, has urged the international community to help with the clean-up. At home, however, he has refused to acknowledge the extent of the damage caused.

Vasily Nesterenko, the director of the Belarussian institute for radiation security, said Bandazhevsky had been arrested soon after sending Lukashenko a letter complaining about the handling of the clean-up. "He was jailed because the health ministry does not like his findings," Nesterenko said.