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Letter of Appeal from the AAAS Committee on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility

Galina Bandazhevskaia
Ul. Chougaieva, 3-1, appt 454
Minsk - Belarus

M. Ivalyo PETROV
The UN Human Rights Committee,
Palais Wilson, rue des Pâquis
1211 - Geneva
Fax : 0041 22 917 90 22

M. MIGUEL DE LA LAMA
The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention,
Palais Wilson, rue des Pâquis
1211 - Geneva
Fax : 0041 22 917 90 06

Dear Sirs,

I am writing to you to urge you to help me to save Professor Yuri Bandazhevsky, who has been imprisoned in Minsk for one and a half years. As a physician, I am worried to see how his state of health has suddenly worsened. Prison is not a sanatorium, staying between its walls does not improve your health. Sometimes it is very difficult simply to survive, and not to be destroyed by the attacks of the penitentiary system. The only way to take all this, and to resist, is to believe firmly in something.

My husband believed strongly in science. Science was his god, he knew that his cause was just and that he was working for the benefit of humankind. I thought that, with the help of those who supported his research, and with the progress in his detention conditions, he would resist and come out as a victor.

But it is precisely after the improvement of his detention conditions, that sudden changes occurred in his physical condition and in his outlook. Professor Bandazhevsky was very thankful and pleased by his new situation. He had been transferred from the common room, where he stayed with 80 other detainees, to a room with 3 beds, with a television. They had even given him a computer for his work. He wrote to me : "I am happy to finally be able to do a productive work, within permitted limits".

In the first period, the whole family felt relieved, because we understood that the possibility to work, to devote himself again to what he loved, would help him to resist, to keep a clear mind in this difficult situation.

But this sense of relief was premature. These new conditions, which I considered to be an improvement, were in reality a trap: I was seeing my husband changing from day to day. Previously, he wrote every day to his family, he shared with us his thoughts, he told us of his plans for the next day, he sent scientific manuscripts to us. In spite of the extremely difficult conditions of his detention, amongst all these detainees, he found the strength to live, work and bolster the morale of his family through his letters.

After June 5th, (date of the improvement of his detention conditions), the letters from my husband got sparser and sparser. He no longer wanted to write about science, he showed no more interest in his children, in family matters.

When I saw my husband for the first time in 3 months (I had no rights to visit him during all this time), I did not recognize him. The man before me was another man, a man crushed, indifferent to his surroundings. His empty eyes, which had a dead look, revealed enormous suffering. He was a man with a split identity, mentally broken.

He asked me to divorce him, while telling me, in the same moment, not to believe in what he was saying or doing just now. He asked me to take into account the situation in which he found himself at the time, and everything which was being plotted around him. I saw that he was suffering, that he was not in a position to tell me openly everything he wanted to tell me. He seemed also not able to express clearly his thoughts. He told me that his thoughts were all mixed up in his head, and that the same thoughts came back to him all the time, like a stuck record: "I do not understand what is happening to me,I am unable to have a clear view of myself".

He told me that his teeth were crumbling, and that he was suffering from constant headaches. I am a physician, and I could well see that I had a sick man in front of me, a man who, due to the efforts of his adversaries, had lost all confidence in himself. He did not even believe any more in what had been sacred to him: his scientific work on the Chernobyl related problems. He had become indifferent to all of this, it frightened him and appeared threatening to him. He told me several times that, when released, he would never again do any scientific research: "I will never again touch this science, linked to radiation". When I asked him how he could betray his cause and let everything go, he responded: "I am afraid for our children".

I do not recognize my husband. When he moved to the radioactive zone with his children, still small, he was clearly conscious of the risks he was taking, but he knew that they were justified by the help he was bringing to the people living in contaminated territories. He told me: "We are physicians, and if something harms our children, we will know how to help them and us, but thousands of other children live in those territories, and they need us too".

And here, after everything he endured to defend his truth, he tells me that he is giving up. He speaks like a frightened man, pushed to the very edge, manipulated, a man permanently abused and under pressure, a man who is being forced to choose between his children and science.

He writes one thing in his letters and gives a different response to my questions.

How is it possible that such changes could occur so suddenly after the conditions of his detention improved?

At the present time, he has completely cut off all contacts with me and our children. He no longer wants to see us during visits, he explains that he has lost confidence even in his family.

It is clear that he is a sick man, a victim of our penitentiary system. They have succeeded in splitting his personality, he is in doubt about himself, disoriented. He has become a man unable to resist, a sort of modelling paste, which one can transform into whatever one wants, which one can drive as one wants to.

I urge you not to let this scientist die. At the present moment, one thing is clear to me, we are losing him. I fear that in several months time, there will be nobody left to be saved.

This is why I urge you to accelerate the individual complaint, which has been registered with UN Human Rights Committee.

I continue to hope that in the XXI century, it will not be permitted to let an innocent man be destroyed.

G. Bandazhevskaya

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