Belarus mounts pressure on anti-nuclear activists

http://www.bellona.org/articles/articles_2009/belrus_pressures_actvists

MINSK, Belarus – Even in the time
of an economic slump, Belarusian authorities keep pushing for the
construction of a new nuclear power plant and aren’t shy to use any
means necessary to intimidate opponents. Bellona’s regular contributor
visited the former Soviet republic and talked to several activists who
are now suffering consequences for voicing their protest. These are his
impressions.


Andrei Ozharovsky,
10/08-2009
– Translated by
Maria Kaminskaya

Belarus
– the country that has borne the brunt of the Chernobyl fallout – is
yet to make a final decision to build a new nuclear power plant (NPP).
It is also for now hard pressed to come up with adequate financing for
the project. More importantly, the very idea finds little support among
the population. Opposition against building another potentially
hazardous site is on the rise and authorities are doing their best to
try to scare protesters into silence.


 

Ivan Kruk: Slapped with a fine for spreading information

Ivan Kruk, a resident of Ostrovets – a town in Grodno Region which may
end up in close proximity to the site favoured as the possible location
of the future NPP – has been ordered to pay a fine of 700,000
Belarusian roubles (just around $250, though still conceivably a
cumbersome amount in a country with one of the lowest standards of
living in Europe, by some ratings) for dissemination of publications
hostile to the construction project.

Kruk, a retired police
investigator, is a law enforcement veteran who has become a staunch
supporter of the Belarusian anti-nuclear movement. Last winter he
helped create the steering committee of an initiative called “Ostrovets
NPP is a Crime” and collected residents’ signatures for an official
statement protesting the NPP project.

The charge against
Kruk was that he gave neighbours in his building a few issues of
samizdat papers Ostrovetsky Vestnik (Ostrovets News) and Mirny Atom
(Peaceful Atom). The two publications were critical of the prospect of
having a new nuclear station near Ostrovets. As Belarusian legislation
dictates, papers like these are not required to be registered
officially – in other words, they will not be officially considered
mass media – if their circulation does not exceed 299 copies and if
they are printed using home equipment.  

Yet, the
Belarusian Ministry of Information accused Kruk of distributing copies
of a periodical media publication without the latter having a masthead
or the publisher’s imprint – fineprint found in regular printed media
that details publishing company data and the date and time of printing,
complete with information saying that the publication is free, if it
is.


 
 

Earlier, authorities were banning any public information campaigning
such as pickets – now it has come to distribution of printed
information. At the same time, official statements are made that public
hearings will soon be organised in Ostrovets, where everyone with the
need to say their piece will be welcome to do so… Somehow, one finds it
hard to believe.

Printed protests


The anti-nuclear leaflets that have become the point of contention with
the information ministry do look like Soviet-time samizdat. Both
Ostrovetsky Vestnik and Mirny Atom are four-page circulars made out in
regular printer-paper size. The publisher’s imprint that the ministry
claimed was absent is there alright, fully detailed: “Наклад 299
асобнiкав, Надрукавана на дамашнiм абсталяваннi…” specifies both the
size of circulation and that the papers are printed with home office
equipment.


 
 

Ostrovetsky Vestnik is a true grassroots initiative. Its publisher and
editor-in-chief, Nikolai Ulasevich, lives in the village of Vornyany,
which is located only six kilometres away from the prospective NPP
site. His is a serious-toned, apolitical newspaper published in two
languages. The first issue highlights the problems that, in Ulasevich’s
words, “we are not going to hear about,” and features Ulasevich’s open
letter to Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.

“I just
don’t believe those fairy tales that atomic energy is harmless, that it
is environmentally clean, that it is the cheapest, because facts – and
facts are stubborn things – unfortunately, they speak of the opposite,”
Ulasevich writes in his address to Lukashenko.

“Why do we,
people who live here, have to take off and leave our homes? The place
where our ancestors lived and where they now rest in peace?”  

Ulasevich requests that Lukashenko receive him and a group of Ostrovets
residents for a meeting “to discuss the problem that we are concerned
about with the aim of rejecting the prospect of building a nuclear
power plant in our region, and better yet, in Belarus in general.”

That Lukashenko is yet to answer Ulasevich’s plea is little surprise.
What is more surprising is why authorities have decided to fine the
distributor of a publication whose publisher has never attempted to
hide from public view and is ready to argue openly his right to an
anti-nuclear stance.

“We are not allowed to distribute
Ostrovetsky Vestnik, in which we want to tell the truth about the NPP
and the unacceptability of building it in our region,” Ulasevich said
in an interview for Bellona Web. “And this is not the first time they
have tried to shut us up.”

Peaceful Atom as a weapon of anti-nuclear satire

The other publication, Mirny Atom (in Russian and Belarusian),
bets on the humour angle, as if saying “How can you take this blunt
non-stop media-wide pro-nuclear brainwashing seriously? – Why, with a
smile, of course!”

 
 
 

The satirists’ arsenal of deadpan anti-nuclear lampooning includes, for
instance, fake commercials featuring gauze respirators or proclamations
calling on Belarusians living in the areas most impacted by Chernobyl
to volunteer radionuclides they have collected in their bodies in years
of exposure so that the new nuclear power plant could “run on local
resources.” A section called “the New Protected Species Book” runs
sensational pieces on the new freakish animals that will appear in
Belarusian forests from all the radiation after the plant goes online,
such as a new relative of the bison, Belarus’ mascot – Bison bonasus
timidus bengalensis – complete with a “photo” of a bison with a
rabbit’s head. In short, it is lively, it is funny – and it is equipped
with all the necessary data on the publisher: “Заснавальнiк –
Беларуская Партыя «Зялёныя»” (Founder: The Belarusian Green Party),
newsdesk physical address, address online etc.

Again, the
publishers have nothing to hide – which evidently makes it more
difficult for the authorities to try to put the squeeze on an
officially registered political entity, so they exert what pressure
they can exert on distributors and any Ostrovets residents who dare say
something against the NPP project.

Alexei Zhingerovsky: Housing officials guarding nuclear interests
Alexei lives in Baranovichi, some 200 kilometres from the future NPP
site. He did in fact commit a misdemeanour – last April 25, on the eve
of Chernobyl’s anniversary, he painted “No to NPP!” on the side of a
residential building.

“That’s nearly the only single way to
express protest,” Alexei said in a telephone interview for Bellona Web.
“The media only run pro-NPP propaganda. But I, as a citizen of the
Republic of Belarus, have a right to an opinion of my own, I have a
right to protest.”

Alexei was detained at the scene. A conversation with a local beat policeman followed and a 24-hour detention.

“Most likely, the detention was off the books. I thought this was the actual punishment, without the fine,” Alexei continued.

But the fine did come later, a citation in the amount of 350,000
Belarusian roubles ($124) for an administrative misdemeanour described
officially as ‘disorderly conduct.’ That, by reasonable expectations,
should have concluded the matter.

In July, however, Alexei
was again summoned to the police station. A charge had been filed
against him by the local housing officials to cover damages inflicted
by another 18 pieces of graffiti found in the neighbourhood. Alexei
argues that he could not have painted those since that night, he had
been detained by the police and spent the night at the precinct.
However, as Alexei adds, the police told him “the mayor himself has
taken a personal interest in the case” and will see to it that a proper
punishment be doled out. One would have been too naïve and too trusting
to expect any leniency or, at the very least, an objective trial once
the higher ranks have been involved.

At a preliminary hearing
that took place on August 4, the housing and public utilities company
Residential Property Management Company of the city of Baranovichi
asked the court that the defendant pay damages in the amount of
3,353,256 Belarusian roubles ($1,188). The plaintiffs claimed that
Alexei had painted eighteen pieces of graffiti in several city streets,
but they failed to produce any evidence to support the claim. With such
convoluted logic in place, Alexei is probably lucky he has not been
accused of painting all of the anti-nuclear graffiti that had sprung up
across Belarus on the eve of the annual Chernobyl commemorative march –
which this year proceeded under the slogan “No to NPP!”

Authorities in this case must have meant the huge lawsuit as a means of
intimidation against their anti-nuclear opponents. Their scare tactics
failed to yield the desired effect: “We will continue our fight,”
Alexei said on the telephone. “That fine, it’s nothing. Unpleasant,
sure, but still, the environment is what matters!”

Igor Pastukhov: Nature reserve director forced to quit

Until recently, Igor Pastukhov was the director of a protected scenic
reserve called Sorochanskiye Ozyora – a national park owing its name
maybe to a small river, Sorochanka, that flows from one of its lakes,
or maybe the lake Sorochye. Located near the Lithuanian border, the
reserve is a unique complex of twelve picturesque lakes and several
rivers. It is a quiet, serene place in a mostly agricultural region,
where many Belarusians who live in industrial cities have their summer
houses and visit frequently to fish, swim, and spend time in the open
country. There aren’t too many clean and beautiful places like this in
Belarus.

When Pastukhov found out a nuclear power plant was
going to be built only eight kilometres from a national park that he,
as director, was entrusted to cherish and protect, he set out doing
what he was supposed to do – protect it.

First, he made
headlines with an interview given to the popular Russian daily
Komsomolskaya Pravda, where he spoke of the sheer incompatibility of a
nuclear power plant and a nature reserve. His bosses gave him a proper
dressing-down: Even though the park is a national entity, it is still
within the jurisdiction of Ostrovets regional administration. The local
administration – called, after the Soviet tradition, raiispolkom – or
regional executive committee – is one of the most zealous members of
the pro-nuclear lobby: Either they have hopes for the vigorous tax
money flow from the new site or they simply follow orders from the
higher-ups.

Pastukhov, however, did not heed the reprimand
and proceeded to write letters to the Belarusian Ministry of Energy and
the country’s government, the Council of Ministers, as well to a range
of public organisations.

“I consider the construction of any
large technological sites, especially atomic energy sites, that would
adjoin the few remaining places of nature to be short-sighted and of
poor judgment,” Pastukhov wrote. “I would like to make this an issue of
broad publicity and debate, with the ultimate goal of preventing the
construction of a nuclear power plant from taking place here.”
 
Naturally, neither broad publicity nor public debate would be something
that Ostrovets administration would take lightly to. Pastukhov started
to feel pressure at work, threats were issued to fire him. He preferred
to leave on his own terms.

Having been made to understand that
an official, by-the-book dismissal would soon follow once he had
received three such reprimands, said Pastukhov, he consulted a lawyer
and tended in his resignation, which was accepted. Pastukhov was
relieved of his duties as agreed by both parties on July 17th.

What is the common thread tying these different stories together? It
gives food for thought that even in today’s Belarus – a country much
criticised for what is widely seen as blatant undemocratic practices
and, by many accounts, a dismal human rights record – citizens do find
ways to express their protest to projects they consider threatening to
the health of their fellow residents and the environment. A student, a
pensioner, and a public servant overcome their fear and consciously
make sacrifices, adamant in their attempts to speak their minds and
save their country.

Tatiana Plaksina, a Minsk-based journalist, contributed to this article.

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