BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

27/04/2006

Chernobyl rallies Belarus opposition

By Artyom Liss

BBC News, Minsk

The road is closed, as are all the shops and restaurants. "Please don't gather here," a police officer, megaphone in hand, tells pedestrians. The air is full of suspense.

Supporters of the Belarussian opposition gathered in the capital Minsk to mark the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in neighbouring Ukraine.

But their dilemma was whether to challenge the authorities and march in the city centre, or to stick to the approved route leading to an obscure park on the outskirts.

A few hundred of the bravest did both.

"I am just walking down the street with some friends. This is allowed, right? And there's nothing wrong with carrying balloons, even if they bear the radiation symbol, correct?"

The 23-year-old student, Vyacheslav, was obviously using me as a guinea pig, to check how convincing he would sound in an interrogation room of Belarussian police.

Prison vans accompanied this crowd almost all the way from the city centre to the little square officially nominated as the gathering point for protesters.

By the time Vyacheslav and his friends arrived, the area was packed with thousands of less radical opposition supporters.

Jubilant mood

This march, the Chernobyl Way, has been held in Minsk almost every year since the nuclear disaster in 1986.

Over the years, it has seen violent arrests and bloodshed, with tens of thousands on the move. And there have been some tiny protests, too, which only attracted small mournful crowds.

But the slogans have always remained more or less the same.

People have been demanding the full truth about the disaster and its effect on health.

This year, there was a marked change.

This was the first anti-government rally since the police violently broke up post-election demonstrations last month.

The opposition leader Alexander Milinkevich - who came a distant second to president Lukashenko a month ago - was keen to use this anniversary to rally support.

"Lukashenko and radiation are the killers of our nation," read one banner.

And the young, almost teenage crowd chanted: "Shame" and "Freedom".

As the protesters walked the sanctioned part of their route, from the Academy of Science to a tiny chapel in a rarely visited park, cars tooted their horns in support.

This was turning into a peaceful, colourful and cheerful youth demonstration - very similar to those that take place elsewhere in Europe.

What differed was the reason for their jubilant mood.

"Look, we're all walking free! Nobody has been arrested. They didn't even touch us," said one student joyfully.

'Irrelevant' opposition

But even so, police lined the streets, officers exchanged descriptions of the most active protesters over their walkie-talkies. And there were uniformed cameramen on every corner.

Mr Milinkevich repeatedly asked his supporters to avoid any confrontation with the security services.

"We want this to be a peaceful march," he told me. "No blood on the ground, no broken bones. We now need as many supporters as we can get, and violence won't help," he said.

"I'm sure we'll have more than 50% of Belarussians on our side very soon."

But so far, this seems to be little more than wishful thinking.

The opposition were hoping to get at least 10,000 people onto the street, but they only rallied about 5,000.

And for many of those who watched this march from the windows of their apartment blocks, the opposition is still irrelevant.

Many of the Belarussians we spoke to seem to favour stability over democracy.

A few hours earlier, at the official memorial service, people bussed in from all around Minsk were told that any calls to tell people the truth about Chernobyl were nothing more than a political stunt.

The authorities here insist that the disaster of 1986 was just a day in history; that it is time to move on and repopulate the affected areas as instructed by President Lukashenko.

The opposition might disagree, but at the moment their voice seems too faint to be heard.

Source:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4949326.stm