MoldovAnn

I attended the opening of a new photo exhibition at the Chornobyl Museum yesterday, “For Love” with photos by American photographer Kristina Brendel.

Kristina and her husband have been living part-time in Arizona and part-time in Minsk, Belarus, for over 10 years. Her photos in this exhibit were almost all shot within the Belarussian Exclusion Zone (except for a few photos of children from the Belarussian city Gomel, which the museum specifically asked her to include). The program was very nice, and included a wonderful performance by the Ukrainian folk chorus “Homin”.

An example:

I also recorded a 4-minute video of one of the chorus members reading a poem she wrote about Chornobyl, but it’s too big to post to YouTube. If I can figure that out, I’ll post it later.

3 other Americans and I went to dinner after the program with Kristina, her husband Doug and their translator Yuri. It was fascinating to hear about the way the Exclusion Zone is approached in Belarus – completely differently from in Ukraine! First and foremost, Kristina there is total denial by the Belarussian government that there is any problem associated with Chornobyl – they deny contamination and in fact, President Lukashenko has started a campaign to open up the Exclusion Zone and repopulate that territory. On the other hand, absolutely no scientific research is allowed to be conducted with the Belarussian Zone. One scientist she knows was arrested for attempting to do some research there, and remains in jail to this day.

This is quite in contrast to the approach on the Ukrainian side of the border – scientific researchers have labs within the Exclusion Zone, and as I wrote from my own trip to the Exclusion Zone; and there is absolutely no official discussion about re-populating the Zone. True, some people have moved back voluntarily, but that has been against official government policy.

Belarus is a very small country with no way to expand its borders, and I can understand that having something like one-third of its territory closed to habitation and agriculture production is problematic. But the idea of pretending that it is safe to live in those areas, and to have a plan to encourage people to move back into those areas is frightening. I hope the Belarussian people are not as naive or short-sighted as their President.