Nuclear Persecution in Russia and Belarus

Voices for nuclear sanity in nations of the former Soviet Union continue to be harassed.

Last July in Belarus, Professor Yuri Bandazhevsky, founding director of the medical institute in Gomel and a published researcher on radiation health effects who studies Chernobyl victims, had his office, dacha, and his mother's apartment searched in the course of a politically suspect investigation into the institute's finances. Bandazhevsky was jailed shortly thereafter, and has reportedly been held in isolation since then. His health is not good.

In Russia in late September, five activists were arrested as they sought to present Chelyabinsk authorities with 5,000 signatures they'd gathered in a few days on a petition against the import of irradiated nuclear fuel for reprocessing. All were free by the next day.

In late October and again in December, environmentalists were interrogated. Homes and offices were searched, and items seized from both Russian and a visiting American nuclear arms control researchers. One of several Moscow anti-nuclear activists brought in for questioning in September, Yakov Kochkaryov, was jailed September 6 after confessing under duress to drug possession charges. He is due to be released in February but supporters fear he may be held longer to prevent his talking to supporters about his interrogation. Anti-nuclear activist Alisa Nikoulina was questioned in December about an explosion near the FSB (state police) offices last April. She was accused of being a traitor to the motherland, taking money from the CIA to use for terrorism, etc.

Last July, as head of the FSB, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the FSB should keep a close eye on environmental organizations because they are infiltrated by foreign spies. An FSB press officer darkly explained for one reporter, "We are constantly encountering cases of using ecological 'covers' for collecting intelligence information. First of all the U.S. special services are interested in such machinations. Very often ecologists do not even suspect they are being used, but sometimes there are exceptions."

UPDATE 1/12/00:

Prof. Bandazhevsky was released from prison just before the New Year, but is under house arrest in Minsk, pending trial. No jail address is available for Yakov Kochkaryov.