Josefin Malmqvist

Belarusian grads forced to work in Chernobyl zone.

The authoritarian Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko is now making graduates from the country’s universities move to areas along the border to Ukraine, the area contaminated after the Chernobyl explosion in 1986. The dictator now wants to repopulate these areas, for agriculture and industry to revive.

”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.” the IHT writes.

Further, they write that ”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.”

Lukashenko not only is a terrible dictator – the last in Europe – it has been said, suppressing his opposition with ruthless measures. He also treats his own population as slave labour. Let the freedom revolution come! 

Aftonbladet, Fox and the IHT