(January 21 2000) As mentioned in the last issue of the WISE News Communique, Belorusian Prof. Yuri Bandashevsky, expert on medical consequences of the Chernobyl accident, was put in jail on fabricated bribery charges. Now he has been released, partly due to foreign pressure, but he's in bad condition and not allowed to leave the capital of Belarus, Minsk.
(523.5129) WISE Amsterdam - Prof. Bandazhevsky was imprisoned starting July 13, arrested under legislation designed to "combat terrorism and other especially violent crimes". In the spring of 1999, Bandashevsky criticized heavily subsidized studies by a Medical Institute close to the health minister in Minsk, which supports the new official Belarussian policy of removing all restrictions on food, and leaving citizens with the free choice of taking or not individual precautions for contaminated food and goods. Not long before his arrest he sent an open letter to President Alexander Lukashenko, with details of how the funds had been misspent.
For almost a month he was held in total isolation. Bandazhevsky was released from prison on December 27, 1999, practically at the same day as Aleksandr Nikitin in Moscow, but not set free as Nikitin. He was released on probation and has to stay in Minsk until his court case, which can take some five to six months. He has lost 20 kg, has aged tens of years and is totally disoriented. In the Minsk prison, he was handcuffed and his feet were also bound.
All his files and his computer have been taken from him. He had started to write a book shortly before he was arrested, but now he has lost all his files. A new rector has been named to his position at the Medical Institute in Gomel. But there is no order from the government about it, so he still officially works there as far as he knows! His wife also said the government decided to release him because he is a well-known scientist, he is in very bad health (heart and gastric diseases), and because he is an only son and has to take care of his mother.
As already mentioned, he needs to stay in Minsk--but that is very uncomfortable: they have no money to rent a flat and he stays in the small apartment of his relatives. He has no chance to find work in Minsk while awaiting his trial. He is very frightened and afraid to talk. There is much pressure on his wife, who also works at the Medical Institute in Gomel.
It is extremely important to keep (and increase) international attention on the case of Prof. Bandazhevsky. Please contact local media outlets, or invite him for international conferences, nominate him for awards, as someone who spoke out in favor of nuclear victims and has been heavily punished for that. It is also important to support his publications. Yuri Bandashevsky has published outstanding research on the chronic effect of low doses of radiation due to incorporated radionuclides, especially ceasium-137 and strontium-90 with food, in the region of Gomel, heavily contaminated by the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. More than 20 thesis on this topic have been presented by his students and accepted in the Moscow Academy.
Sources:
- several E-mails January 2000
- WISE News Communique 522.5120, 10 December 1999
Contact: Prof. Michel Fernex,
Tel: +33-389-407183; Fax: +33-389-407804.
E-mail: solange.fernex@wanadoo.fr