Christmas joy in doubt for Chernobyl children

PARIS - Belarus' children face a heart-breaking end to the year after a threat by the country's authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko to stop youngsters contaminated by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster from making Christmas visits to families in Western Europe.

Around 1500 children, many of them with leukaemia or damaged immune systems, travel each Christmas to Britain, Ireland, France, Germany and other European countries, where they spend up to a month with host families.

The trips are paid by church groups and other goodwill associations, eager to give the youngsters a break from areas of the country poisoned by nuclear fallout.

But this year's Christmas outing and holidays for six thousand more youngsters in 2005 are in peril.

Lukashenko made the threat in a speech to Parliament on November 17 in which he said Chernobyl children who travelled abroad came back indulged and spoilt.

"You must have seen yourselves what happens to our children when they come back from abroad: we've been invaded by consumerism," Lukashenko said. "We don't need that kind of education."

He said children return from foreign trips "completely different people - only in extreme cases should we allow our children to leave the country".

He added that if NGOs and other groups want to provide assistance then "let them transfer funds and have spending controlled from Belarus".

Lukashenko's words triggered dismay, especially in Ireland, where organisations have welcomed Chernobyl youngsters since 1986.

Ireland has sent convoys of trucks to the stricken region, bringing in more than €30 million ($56.3 million) of aid. Its outreach group, the Chernobyl Children's Project, whose patron is Ali Hewson, wife of U2 singer Bono, has 7000 volunteers and 73 associations across the country.

"We are just waiting, watching and applying diplomatic pressure where we can," Simon Walsh, project manager for CCP International, told the Herald.

Irish families are waiting to accept 1000 sickly children this Christmas holiday period.

 

For a small country, Ireland wields considerable clout within the European Union. Sources say the EU has instructed its diplomats in Belarus to see whether Lukashenko was serious or simply posturing.

Talks were being held in Minsk and Moscow yesterday.

France, Britain and Germany are other countries where Chernobyl groups are anxiously awaiting clarification. Analysts say the President's move appears to be a jab at the EU, which said that a referendum in October that voted to let him stay in office for a third term was a fraud.

CHERNOBYL'S LEGACY

Chernobyl was the world's worst nuclear disaster.

The April 1986 explosion at a nuclear plant in Ukraine spewed wind-borne radioactive debris over more than a fifth of Belarus.

Experts say northerly winds carried at least 70 per cent of the contamination into Belarus.

A 2002 report by the United Nations Development Programme and UN Children's Fund suggests thousands of children will fall sick with thyroid cancer.