Chernobyl Victims: Don't Forget Us
Ukraine and Belarus appealed to the world Friday not to forget Chernobyl and its victims who still need help 16 years after the world's worst nuclear disaster spewed clouds of radioactivity across much of Europe.
Hundreds of people, many of them still working at the Chernobyl power plant, braved the biting cold to lay flowers and light candles at a memorial service to loved ones who died after Chernobyl's reactor four exploded on April 26, 1986.
Also paying tribute, Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma, Prime Minister Anatoly Kinakh and other officials laid flowers at a symbolic burial mound in the capital Kiev.
Every year survivors mark the anniversary in the nearby town of Slavutych at 1:23 a.m., the moment when the explosion occurred.
"The Chernobyl catastrophe should never be wiped from human memory," the government said in a state newspaper. It urged human and financial support for the people involved in the clean-up $#151; so-called liquidators $#151; and other victims.
"We call upon voluntary organizations, funds, every concerned citizen to show understanding and help heal the painful problems of the liquidators...those who were evacuated from their birthplaces, invalids and families who lost breadwinners as a result of the accident at Chernobyl."
The Chernobyl explosion, which killed just over 30 firefighters at the time, has been blamed for thousands of deaths due to radiation-linked illness and for a huge increase in thyroid cancer.
Dozens of women silently laid red carnations at the burial mound as another year passed with Ukraine, neighboring Belarus and Russia unable to overcome the consequences of the accident.
"I come every year," said Lyubov Rasovova, who was fortunate to have the day off from her job at Chernobyl on the day of the accident.
CONTAMINATED FOOD
In Belarus, thousands gathered near the center of the capital Minsk to call for government and international help to heal the scars of the fall-out and demanding an end to food output from miles of land contaminated with radioactive debris.
Mired in poverty, many in Ukraine and Belarus still pick mushrooms and berries with high levels of radioactivity.
Health specialists have advised that genetic mutations and contaminated food could lead to a new generation of Chernobyl victims and prolong the tragedy for years to come.
One academic, Dmitry Hrodzinsky, also said he believed the concrete tomb now encasing the ruined reactor was unsafe and was allowing radioactive dust to seep into the environment — a charge that officials denied.
Officials at the plant agree the reactor needs another covering, dubbed a second shelter, but they say radiation levels are decreasing and the ruined reactor poses little threat. "Today the situation at the station is stable," said Volodymyr Kholoshcha, head of the Chernobyl zone's administration.
Ukraine's government said it would strive to make the reactor safe, improve the lives of the accident's victims and revive contaminated lands but that it needed funds promised by the West when Chernobyl was shut down in 2000.
"We hope that the 16th anniversary of this dreadful event ... will attract the attention of the world community to the global problem of ... protecting the world from future (industrial and ecological) disasters," the government said. "We believe our appeal will reach the hearts of those who understand others' sorrow."