Exclusion Zone Permit

This is a permit to enter the "exclusion zone" -- the contaminated region around the Chernobyl reactor -- issued to Chernobyl Children's Project International volunteer Kathy Ryan in October 2002. On this particular day, CCPI volunteers visited some of the elderly "refugees" who continue to live illegally in abandoned villages in Belarus.

The permit notes that it was issued by the Belarusian "Committee on the Problems of the Catastrophe at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant."

After the disaster at Chernobyl, people living in the most contaminated regions -- almost 400,000 people -- were forced to leave their homes for their own safety. Over 2,000 towns and villages were bulldozed to the ground, and today hundreds more stand eerily silent -- a radioactive wasteland. Whether or not a village was evacuated was based on soil contamination levels. In Belarus, people living in an area with a soil contamination level exceeding 40Ci/km2 caesium-137 were resettled.

According to UNICEF, in Belarus 54 large agricultural and forestry enterprises and nine industrial enterprises had to be closed. Twenty-two raw material deposits can longer be used. Twenty-five percent of Belarusian farmland has been lost. Displaced farmers lost their land and means of employment. All of this contributes to a downward economic spiral for this country.

Many of those living in areas with "lower" levels of radiation contamination continue to live in their towns, but those who voluntarily left their villages were mostly young families with children -- a trend that socially and economically damages those regions. Many companies and farms closed because of a lack of skilled workers, resulting in more families moving away ... and so on.

Although it is illegal, a number of refugees have moved back into their villages and homes -- particularly elderly people resistant to making a new start away from their life-long homes. The photograph depicts a Belarusian man living in the Exclusion Zone, who entertained CCPI volunteers by pulling out and playing a musical instrument.