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Swedish Journalist: Shadow Of Chernobyl Disaster Still Hanging Over Belarus

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Swedish Journalist: Shadow Of Chernobyl Disaster Still Hanging Over Belarus
PHOTO: SVABODA.ORG

The accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant forced hundreds of thousands of Belarusian villagers to leave their homes.

Radio Liberty accompanied the Swedish journalists in the journey to Slauharad, Krasnapolle, and Cherykau districts.

The accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant forced hundreds of thousands of Belarusian villagers to leave their homes. Those who stayed in the zone are still engaged in the housekeeping, just like before, and they actually don’t bother whether the authorities remember about them. They pay no attention to the danger of the radiation and believe there was no need to evacuate the people. The villagers said this to the journalists from Sweden, who visited the exclusion zone.

Apple orchads like symbols of vanished villages

“It’s important to look for apple-trees. An apple orchad may prompt there was a house nearby . Now it is buried and pines were planted on the spot,” – Swedish journalist Anna-Lena Laurén describes the Belarusian village, evacuated due to the radiation contamination. She visited the exclusion zone of the three districts of Mahiliou region and made a report for the newspaper Dagens Nyheter.

ANNA-LENA LAURÉN AND BEATRICE LUNDBORG

Anna-Lena Laurén, together with her colleague Beatrice Lundborg drove several hundred kilometers along the “Chernobyl” roads of Mahiliou region. The Swedish guests talked to the inhabitants of the villages, who, despite the radiation danger, stick to their native land. The journalists saw the deserted landscapes, and how Belarusians stubbornly hold on to their land by visiting cemeteries every year.

In her report "Rural Life Disappearing after Chernobyl”, Anna wrote that she tried to imagine what life was like in the evacuated village before the disaster.

“Houses, shades, tents. A rural road is leading to the nearest cemetery. The tombs are still there, and they gather the dwellers every year to mark the holiday of Radunitsa. This is the land where the relations with ancestors and the native land are concrete and easy to feel,” - Anna-Lena Laurén has stated.

Having stopped near some grave, Anna asked to show that the villagers were doing here on Radunitsa. The Swede was told about the tablecloth that covered the grave and the towel, which was tied on the cross; they showed how the villagers bypass graves of their kindred, rolling a painted egg and saying, "Christ is risen!". The foreigners listened attentively.

“30 years after the Chernobyl catastrophe, its shadow is still hanging over Belarus. There’s no country which suffered that much from it. 70% of the radioactive fallout fell here, and one of five inhabitants suddenly found themselves on the poisoned land. The whole villages were buried, and people cannot return to them. This catastrophe demolished the whole rural culture,” - Anna-Lena Laurén has written.

The villagers from the “zone” surprised the Swedes with the simplicity of relations and hospitability. The ice towards the guests broke soon. The villagers - self-settlers told about their lives, boasted about their households. Some complained about health issues but didn’t connect it with radiation.

Elderly villagers assured the foreign journalists there was no need after the Chernobyl catastrophe to leave their homes, which were affected by the radiation. They insisted that those who had left, died.

“They were unhappy in their new homes, and now most of them are dead. We stayed here and we are still alive,” – the residents of Dubna tried to convince the guests. Anna conveyed this simple peasants “truth” in her report.

“Many elderly villagers never left their homes,” – Anna has noted. – They lived in a dense peasant community until the 1980s, in spite of the forced collectivization. The day of April 26, 1986 threw this archaic society in the nuclear age. 200 kilometers away, an explosion occurred at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant."

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