Belarusian Graduates Sent to Work in Chernobyl Zone Against Their Will

Several thousand supporters of the beleaguered Belarusian opposition marched through the capital on Saturday to mark the anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear accident and protest an alleged government cover-up of the disaster's consequences.

Many of the approximately 3,000 marchers expressed particular dismay over the government's policy of assigning recent university graduates to work in areas contaminated by the 1986 nuclear reactor explosion.

The Chernobyl power plant in Ukraine is just south of the border with Belarus. The explosion spewed a cloud of radiation over much of Europe, and Belarus, downwind from the plant, was severely affected.

In recent years, the government has removed about 1,000 cities and towns from the radiation danger list, despite what critics say is a substantial continuing health risk.

Statistics about illness in the contaminated parts of Belarus - about 23 percent of its territory - are kept under wraps by the government of authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko.

The government says that the areas it has removed from the danger list are safe to return to.

Protesters said the government was denying help to people affected by the disaster, including those who were sent in to clean up radioactive fallout.

"The government has abolished our benefits in order to bury us and the problems together. Lukashenko is simply burying those people who liquidated the disaster," said 56-year-old Valery Yagur, a protester who had been among the clean-up workers.

Lukashenko's government rarely allows opposition rallies, and participants took the opportunity of Saturday's sanctioned gathering to raise protests against his hardline rule, carrying signs reading "Freedom" and the now-banned red-and-white flag that was the first flag of post-Soviet Belarus.

The demonstration was peaceful and ended without incident.

Protester Konstantin Timokhov, 21, said he was deeply worried that the government will force him to work in a contaminated area when he graduates from university.

"The government is hiding the truth from us. My health and my future are in danger," he said.

Radiation levels have declined substantially in most areas near Chernobyl, but scientists disagree on the level of risk.

Some doctors who work in towns downwind from Chernobyl say the health effects are still being felt, and students being sent into these areas are afraid.

Kasya Markouskaya, 23, has been ordered to spend two years in Buda-Koshelyovo, a contamination-area town, when she graduates with a journalism degree this spring.

"My situation is little different from that of a slave who has been forced to do dangerous work," Markouskaya told The Associated Press recently. If she refuses, she will either be stripped of her diploma or required to reimburse the state for the full cost of her education. When she entered university, there were no such strings attached.

The work assignments began last year, and about one-fourth of this year's 21,000 graduates are being sent to the contaminated areas.

Vice Prime Minister Alexander Kosinets said at parliamentary hearings Friday that if the work assignments were canceled, these regions would be left without the doctors, teachers, agricultural workers and other specialists they need.

Many people from these areas moved away; Lukashenko now wants to repopulate them so agriculture and industry can be revived.

Some of the young professionals sent to contaminated regions last year have already fled. About 800 graduates have refused to take up their work assignments this year, the Education Ministry said.

Saturday's rally also included statements of opposition to proposals to building a nuclear power plant.

Lukashenko later in the day called opponents of a plant "enemies of our people."