Liquidation Of Liquidators

Historical memory is the regime's sworn enemy.

The Chernobyl reactor exploded forty years ago? That can't be right! That catastrophe turns forty the other day? I'm sorry, how old are we? It's best not to count. It seems unbelievable, but Sunday is indeed the fortieth anniversary of the disaster.

Chernobyl is in all of us. And I don't mean radiation. Chernobyl is as real as the Holodomor or the Holocaust, though those are older. Chernobyl is forever. At least for those who lived at that time, forty years ago.

Chernobyl kills, breaks, drives you crazy. My Ukrainian friend and colleague recently met in Kiev with the heroes she wrote about back then. One - a former liquidator - now drinks and claims that the "sarcophagus", which was erected by the end of 1986 and contains fuel-containing masses, radioactive water and radioactive dust, in fact has long been empty, and the talk about the contents is the machinations of the world behind the scenes. The second is a scientist, a biologist who, after the disaster, became obsessed with mutant animals and saw two-headed calves and six-legged rabbits everywhere. The third is an environmentalist who now says that the Chernobyl explosion was a joint terrorist attack by the KGB, the IAEA and, for some reason, the WHO. Can these people be called victims? Absolutely. Chernobyl destroyed them.

Together, since the explosion, about seven million people in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia have been recognized as Chernobyl victims. In Ukraine, they are divided into categories - evacuated from the exclusion zone, living in the zone of enhanced radioecological control, liquidators. They have benefits - for payment of utilities, travel, medicines, treatment in sanatoriums, dentures. And additional vacation days. In Ukraine, which has been defending itself from the aggressor for a year, there are more than one and a half million Chernobyl victims. That is, the burden on the budget is considerable. Nevertheless, the Ukrainian government - or rather, none of them (there, governments change, no matter how strange it may sound in Belarus) - has not thought of canceling Chernobyl benefits.

In 1991, the Supreme Soviet of Belarus adopted the law "On Social Protection of Citizens Affected by the Chernobyl NPP Catastrophe. The law established benefits for Chernobyl victims and determined which categories of citizens fall under its scope. And then Lukashenko came. When such people come, they start destroying everything around them.

After a year in power, he issued a decree № 349 "On streamlining some benefits for citizens affected by the disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Chernobyl victims lost the right to free travel in public transportation, to interest-free loans for the purchase or construction of housing, to free medicines for children living in the radiation control zone. In 2007, the right to free medicines was also deprived of the liquidators. Then Lukashenko traveled, as he always does on the anniversary of the accident, through Gomel region and demanded that the Belarusians stop "suffering and crying" about Chernobyl, and walk with confidence and optimism towards the victory of communism or something similar. Enough, he said, to divide people into Chernobyl victims and non-Chernobyl victims.

And in 2013, the Belarusian regime abandoned the concept of "liquidator" altogether. Liquidators were transferred to the status of "victims" of the accident. It turns out that those who rushed to Pripyat from different towns and villages after the accident, either by order or voluntarily, were not engaged in liquidation of the consequences. They didn't put out the fire, didn't clear the debris, didn't provide medical care, didn't transport victims, didn't deliver protective equipment, didn't saw trees. They just came to be patient. By December 31, 2012, all liquidators were required to surrender their credentials. Bingo.

Many liquidators did not live to see the moment they were relegated to victims. Perhaps fortunately. They didn't survive the humiliation. It would be all right if it were benefits - Lukashenko is greedy, he doesn't want money for a coupon for a person who put out a reactor, it can be understood. But the demand to hand in the certificates instead of keeping them at least as a souvenir - it was a mockery. But not only that: it was memory erasure, so that even in the homes of the liquidators nothing reminiscent of the catastrophe would be preserved. Why? Simply because historical memory is as fierce an enemy for Lukashenko as red-and-white umbrellas. It will not allow to forget not only the Chernobyl catastrophe, but also what he did. And his crimes are several years younger than Chernobyl. So, if Belarusians still remember about Chernobyl, they won't forget about him either?

They think right. We will not forget. We will not forgive it. Even after forty years.

Irina Khalip, especially for Charter97.org.

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