Comité Bandajevsky

Comité Bandajevsky

Association

« Enfants de Tchernobyl Bélarus »

Translation from the Russian by Wladimir Tchertkoff (VT). Tchertkoff knows Bandajevsky well and has directed documentary films on the Bandazhevsky case.

- La Commission de Recherche et d’Information Indépendante sur la Radioactivité (CRIIRAD)

- Le Groupement de Scientifiques pour l’Information sur l’Energie Nucléaire (GSIEN)

Galina B: The police officers arrived at our house at about 11 o'clock in the evening and the search went on until 4 o'clock in the morning, first in our house and then in his office in the Institute. They then, took him off and threw him into an isolated cell where he remained for the next twenty-two days. There, he slept on the floor, covering himself with newspapers. He was given food once a day. The cell measured two meters by two and was shared with another prisoner. But the other prisoners only remained a few days. There was just one small sort of opening under the ceiling. The floor was painted red all over – we don't know why. Afterwards, his clothes were red because of the paint and because he slept on the floor. He didn't have a tooth brush a razor or a towel.

GB: Literally, it was a temporary confinement cell, a part of the police structure. Minor offenders are held there for a maximum of 2 or 3 days. But Bandajevsky was arrested under one of Loukachenko's decrees against terrorism and organised crime endangering civic society. This decree gives the authorities the right to prolong the incarceration for up to 30 days without a lawyer's visit or anything else. It was the beginning of August and extremely hot: 30°C in the shade. He lost twenty kilos in twenty-two days and needed help to stand. He had no strength left.

PSYCHOLOGICAL TORTURE

GB: Before his first release, there had been the official reading of the act of indictment to him in the presence of the lawyer. The lawyer told us that during this procedure Yuri was subjected to very strong police pressure. One of them said to him: "If you confess, you will be able to go back home, but if not – your mother has already one foot in the grave and your wife is ill – she has had to be hospitalised." And he had been without any news for 22 days and the cross-questioning had been going on for a long time. When the police suggested this terrifying image of his mother dying and his wife in hospital and that if he did not confess, he would remain in this gaol for goodness knows how long, the lawyer realised that he was on the point of giving in. He had the impression that all it would have taken would have been to put a pen into his hand and he would have signed anything. It was at that moment that the lawyer intervened and said to the police officers: "But what are you doing? This is illegal – your realise that." The lawyer dared to say it and thanks to this intervention Yuri was able to pull himself together because he felt that he was not alone. It was the first time since the beginning of his incarceration that he had the feeling that someone was on his side.

GB: That was when the lawyer rang me at home and said : "At least let him see you. Come to the prison gates so that he can see that you are there, that you are not dying ". I was with my children, and they wouldn't even allow us to get near him. He had a long beard, half-white. He seemed demented. When he saw us he shouted "You are not going to abandon me like all the others!" And then they took him away in the police van.

We assumed that he had been taken to the "normal" prison at Gomel. But, the following day, the lawyer went to the Gomel town prison where, according to the prosecutor's documents, he should have been retained. and was told "He isn't here. You'll have to look for him. He must be somewhere else." Later, we learnt that they had wanted to prolong his incarceration in solitary confinement beyond the legal limit so that they could get what they wanted out of him. They took him to another town, Moguilev, 120 kilometres from Gomel. There, they put him in the same sort of cell. At Moguilev, he was half dead when he was thrown into the cell and when he came to his senses he said he saw standing over him a sort of giant with scars all over his face holding a cup of hot water and a biscuit. And the man said to him: "There, drink that – it'll do you some good." Bandajevsky learnt later that the man was a thief who had been given the job of helping the guards and keeping an eye on the prisoners. But he realised that Yuri was in a bad state and he just made this humane gesture. It moved Yuri to tears. When he took the cup and exchanged a few words with this man, he suddenly realised how weak and ill he felt, all his energy was sapped.

GB: His health was so bad that he had to be hospitalised. He was put in a ward under constant supervision by guards with soldiers at the door outside and in the vicinity. On top of that, they attached one of his feet to the bed with handcuffs! After his stay at the hospital, he was transferred to Minsk and it is was there that I was allowed to seem him for the first time, 50 days after his arrest. I was taken into the cell with a priest. It was in one of the prison rooms. He was already wearing the black prisoners' uniform, which hung down on him like a scarecrow. When I got close to him, I saw that he had no sense of space. He didn't understand why I was there, what the priest was doing there. We didn't get to talk, to have a conversation. He cried all the time.

GB: The only thing you were allowed to do was telephone meetings, once a month, through the glass windows.

VT: He was arrested on July 13 and released on December 27. Five and a half months.

GB: When he was released he was broken, scared, terrorised. He repeated over and over again the same sentence, at least a hundred times a day: "Are they going to send me back inside?" In the street, he was continually under the impression that he was being followed. At home, he only spoke in a low voice, and if he wanted to say something really important, he went into a corner of the house and wrote it down on a bit of paper. He never wanted to walk outside and tried to avoid people who might know him. He thought that they had all betrayed him. He said to me, "I don't want their (hypocritical) compassion, to hear them saying "We are all behind you. What a shame! You, who had the job of Director ... ." So, he avoided all contacts with his acquaintances and friends.

Did he have any degree of detachment? Could he talk about the "illogical" ways in which he behaved?

GB: At this stage, he was completely immersed in the situation. He did not have enough detachment. It used to make me and the children angry. But, as time went on, I realised that getting angry was no good. It was not some sort of self-indulgence. The phrase, "What do you think? – will they send me back to prison?" was repeated a hundred times a day. For example, in the evening, when he went to bed, he would say: "I close my eyes, and I can see this very narrow barrack room. There were eight of us. There was nothing to do all day long. They were there the whole time." He would say, "I used to look at my hand for hours on end." It was some sort of associated image when he went to bed in the evening after coming home. There was this obsessional image of this hand "I used to look at it for hours and hours when I was inside. I am sick to death of this hand It needs cutting off. It always comes back when I shut my eyes and I think of prison". In all probability, it was that the hand - he had to put it somewhere - when you realise how little space there was ...

VT: Where Yuri was, the prisoners were only allowed out for half an hour. And "out" meant, in fact, no more than a corridor with a grating above: a sort of corridor with the sky above the grating. There, half an hour to breathe. Inside, the inmates did everything together, washed their clothes, smoked, went to the toilet, cooked their meals. In short, everyday life, for all these people, life was there.. So, in such a context, you can understand that reading ... !laughter)

GB: People in the West just don't understand what Soviet prisons are like. These prisons are wretched. It is a form of torture to be condemned to live in such conditions. The damp, and all these people smoking. Day and night - he got a sort of cough. The lawyers say that detention under these conditions is a sort of torture. We began to insist that he should be transferred to a no-smoking prison barracks – but that sort of thing doesn't exist. There was one bed for three inmates – so amongst themselves they worked out a rota. They infected each other. The bacteria and the damp caused furonculosis. After 6 months, when he came out, his whole body was covered with pustules. Youri didn't talk about suicide but he said "I wouldn't be able to stand it".

RESUMPTION OF SCIENTIFIC ACTIVITIES DURING THE PERIOD OF PAROLE BEFORE THE TRIAL (27 December 1999 - 18 June 2001)

GB: He was under house arrest for a year and a half: initially within the city zone, then the whole country. During the whole time he was never summoned for interrogation. After about 3 or 4 months of such a freedom I could see that he was beginning to become human again. His fear was gradually melting away, he took up his research again. He started breeding Syrian hamsters in the bath at home for experiments. He carried out a whole lot of work which was published between the two periods of captivity. However, at the same time, he kept his distance as far as personal contacts were concerned.

GB: He didn't want any more of that. On the other hand, he enjoyed meeting journalists, visitors, doctors from abroad. On the day before the trial it seemed to me that he was almost back to his old self. In ways he had got used to his new status which was no longer that of Director, but which allowed him to carry on with his research.

GB: The examining magistrates no longer worried him. He was busy with his beloved research. You had the impression that he had attained a certain serenity. And it was in this rather positive frame of mind that he went into the second trial.

Did he try to intervene during the proceedings : to find out what the examining magistrate was doing?

GB: He had a sort of apathy about the question. He was so convinced of his innocence –

VT: Yes, that happens frequently – indifference about the legal aspect. Convinced of his own innocence, he was confident and certain that the judgement would be in his favour.

GB: He went into the trial full of optimism, sure that he would be able to show his innocence. He participated a lot during the trial, asked a lot of questions, he took notes of everything. His attitude was quite scientific : this rational detachment, noting the opposing statements of the witnesses. He wasn't really sure of how good the lawyer was. He was certain that his defence depended on himself, that the lawyer just feed on the analyses that he had made during the preliminary examinations and the trial and then used them when he was pleading. He got his first bad jolt only when the public prosecutor asked the court for a sentence of nine years. That threw him off balance, he began to panic He threw himself from wall to wall. He just couldn't imagine that the court could make such a decision.

In the film*, what is striking is how Galina, who has considered the possibility of prison, is worried, whereas Yuri has no inkling. But, now, with hindsight, it is easier to understand this single-mindedness. But, Galina, were you, were you aware from the start of what was involved - and did he, did Youri realise as the trial went on?

GB: He was quite convinced that he was being maligned by people that maybe he had offended while running the Institute, that it was all about revenge and antagonism - muck racking on a local level.

GB: I was the first to see the seriousness of it all. The first TV programme about him and his research (January 1999) made me cry. When I saw the film, which was a great success on the state TV, and when the director called me, I said to him, "When they put the handcuffs on him, Galina Bandajevskaya will be left all on her own. So just don't expect me to clap and jump up and down with joy after this programme." Everyone made fun of me. It was "feminine over-reaction".

GB: I began to become aware of the pervasive cowardice, the silences, the fear. No one cared about the results of his research: the correlation between the radioactivity of Cesium and pathologies.

GB: In relation to what he was accused of, namely facilitating registration in exchange for money, there was someone in the family who really wanted to come to the Institute. I mentioned it to Youri who said, "if that is want you want to talk about, just don't come anywhere near me." Similarly, our daughter, the eldest, she is a doctor now, she was a gold medallist at the end of her studies. She needed to pass 3 exams to get into the Institute. But when you finish your studies with a distinction of that order, one is enough. Nevertheless, Yuri made her go through the three exams. In the same way, he made her do three years study instead of one to which she was entitled. When she reproached him for it, he said, "I don't want you to shame me by your ignorance." She had to know everything in the programme.

In June 2002, representatives of the Council of Europe came and visited him in prison. As a result, he was moved from a prison barracks with 60 prisoners to a cell with three; it was part of the prison hospital. Three months later, Galina discovered a man who was physically and psychologically unrecognisable. She approached the UN Human Rights commission in September.

GB: When I saw him in September, I could see that he had become a harder man. By nature, Youri is a tender person, warm and responsive, a kind man. Now, he seemed cold, a foreigner, and life beyond the walls of the prison had no interest for him any more. When you talked to him, no matter what it was, about life outside, whether it was family life or work, or national political and social life, it just didn't interest him. I got the impression that it was a way of protecting himself against the world that had been refused him. During visits, he spoke all the time. In the same conversation, periods of great excitement were followed by total depression: "I cannot speak much - ", and, at the same time, he wouldn't let the other get a word in. He turned pale, broke out in cold sweats. That is why he said : "listen, I'll go on talking to you as long as I have got the strength and when I am tired you can speak." He then broke down crying. During our last visit, I said to him, "I can't see the sparkle of life in your eyes anymore". He said over and over again that the isolation was so hard to bear. I just don't know if he will have the strength to stand up to it much more.

SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH METHODS

Yuri appears to be someone capable of making a passionate defence of a completely erroneous cause?

VT: Galina always pointed out that he always checked scientifically a hundred and one times before affirming something was true. He had an analytical grid, rigour. He is the only who, before coming to a conclusion, brought together the three different approaches for one scientific objective : clinical, histological, and experimental approaches. All that, to verify his hypotheses and findings, and at each stage of his reasoning. It is only when he is sure of something that he speaks of it. He is only sure of a hypothesis after it has been checked several times, in numerous different ways. And yet, he is portrayed as a lunatic. One of his students, who has been appointed director in his place, maintains that the whole business (to which she owes her speedy promotion – editor's note) is no more than; "Bandajevsky's schizophrenic delirium"

GB: You must admit, though, that he was not always easy to understand. People said that "someone normal would not go with his family to live in Gomel. Someone normal would not raise hamsters in his flat. Someone normal would not take his wife to contaminated villages. Someone normal cannot work for ten years without taking a holiday."

VT. The answer lies with the publication of his scientific demonstrations. These have just been completed and will be presented at the University of Basle on February 15, (2003). The demonstration will be in accordance with the required international protocols. We filmed one part of this work, specifically the demonstration of the effectiveness of the pectin absorbent which reduces organic levels of radioactivity. Before being treated with this absorbent, the organism is ausculated and an electrocardiographic examination is carried out. Then, after fifteen days of pectin treatment, the child's level of radioactivity is measured again on the radiation spectrometer and it can be seen that there is a significant reduction in radioactivity levels compared to the control group which underwent no pectin treatment. Similarly, a cardiological examination is then carried out by Galina showing a remission and reversibility of the cardiac pathology. When examining a child, she does not know the radionuclide level : the results are secret, sealed and deposited in a safe. Afterwards, the ethical committee and the statisticians compare the results. It can be seen that Pectin eliminates radioactivity from the organism, and that once this is below a certain level, the organism recovers. This is all carried out according to universal scientific methods. But Yuri was not attacked because of the science. And so he just won't confess to contemptible actions that he has not done with those who know him - people who rather, were sufferers, obliged to conform to his own standards of rigour. Moreover, he is convinced that his research has been carried out in all honesty, and he goes on believing what he has discovered unless someone can show him an error.

* This refers to an interview of Youri and Galina in a film directed by Tchertkoff, April, 2000.