Having a tattoo or an unmarried sister or an Instagram account — all of these things can count against women seeking custody of their children in Russia’s North Caucasus region, where local court decisions often reflect communities’ beliefs that children belong to the father’s side of the family.

In Muslim-majority Chechnya and Ingushetia, and to a lesser extent, Daghestan, deep-seated customs dictate that children go to the father’s side of family following a divorce. And while Russian federal law has demonstrated its preference for such children to stay with their mothers, city and district courts in the North Caucasus often go their own way in the name of tradition.

The issue is the subject of an extensive report by Current Time that tells the stories of several women struggling to wrest their children from a firmly established patriarchal system.

Nina Tseretilova’s efforts to be reunited with her three children have been thwarted for more than a year, despite the overturning of a local court’s decision to deny her custody because of her “lifestyle.”

In taking her kids away from her in July, Daghestan’s Kirovsky District Court was apparently swayed by testimony from Tseretilova’s ex-husband, Magomed Tseretilov, who argued that she had created an “unhealthy” moral and psychological environment for bringing up children.

As evidence, he presented photographs and videos from his ex-wife’s Instagram page in which she had conversations about “sex” and unconventional relations, and the court record noted that tattoos were visible on her body.

Tseretilova’s underage children, meanwhile, testified that she had hosted parties at which young people had smoked and consumed alcohol. The court was shown a music video by the Dagestani group Duet 11 in which Tseretilova plays a prominent role.

For her part, Tseretilova testified that she had married her ex-husband when she was 18 and that from the beginning he periodically beat her. She said she left him after he beat her while she was pregnant with their third child.

The court, taking into account the established traditions of Russia and of the Republic of Daghestan, determined that Tseretilova led a lifestyle “that does not correspond to the behavioral norms and rules of the majority,” and granted custody to her ex-husband.

Tseretilova, who tells Current Time that her ex-husband had “decided to punish” her after she pursued payment of alimony following their divorce in 2016, took the case to Daghestan’s Supreme Court.

But even though the high court ruled in her favor in March, her children have still not been handed over.

Zhanetta Tukhayeva has been working to get her eldest son back in an ordeal she says began seven years ago when her ex-husband, Ruslan Ibayev, kidnapped the boy for the first time, leaving their younger son with her only because she was still breastfeeding him.

In March 2020, the Leninsky District Court in the Chechen capital of Grozny ruled in favor of Ibayev, saying that both the couple’s sons should live with their father and that her parental rights be limited.

Ibayev’s argument in the case he initiated against Tukhayeva stressed the importance of “adats” — customary practices observed by Muslims in the North Caucasus — and cited her “divorced sisters” and “silicone lips” among reasons to deny her custody.

In its ruling, the court noted that Ibayev was an attentive father whose “social behavior was “completely based on the norms of Islam and Chechen traditions.”

It also backed Ibayev’s complaint about comments Tukhayeva made on Instagram in which she criticized the court proceedings as “laughable.” She wrote that her religious beliefs prevented her from getting any cosmetic procedures and accused her husband “of slinging mud and trying to intimidate her.”

The court, saying the post “shows what kind of person she is,” ordered her to delete her account.

The decisions were completely overturned just four months later by the Chechen Supreme Court, and Ibayev’s petition to appeal was denied. But Tukhayeva still has not been reunited with her eldest son and does not know where he lives.

Russian Islamic scholar Akhmet Yarlykapov explained that tradition- and religion-bound beliefs influence North Caucasus communities’ views on custody issues, particularly those involving women who married outside their clan.

“Following a divorce, the woman leaves for her father’s house, leaves for that clan. The children are considered to belong to the family of their father and, accordingly, remain in his family,” Yarlykapov told Current Time, the Russian-language network overseen by RFE/RL in cooperation with VOA. “With the grandmother, with an uncle, with anyone — but on the father’s side.”

In custody disputes, the influence of Shari’a law often leads the local court to side with the father’s family, according to Yarlykapov.

Olga Gnezdilova, a lawyer for the Legal Initiative project, which helps people file cases with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), said that in these cases it is common for local courts to scrutinize the “moral character” of the mother.

Gnezdilova says her organization has taken on many such cases from the North Caucasus. She highlighted multiple instances in which the fathers had died, yet local courts awarded custody to the deceased male’s families.

The lawyer added that Russian courts, referring to the 1959 UN Declaration on the Rights of the Child, have repeatedly enforced the declaration’s article stating that young children should not be separated from their mothers except in exceptional circumstances.

But while Russia does not officially recognize Shari’a law or adats, in practice Islamic law and tradition often compete against Russian secular law in the North Caucasus.

Gnezdilova said that while “regional judges have no legal basis to rely on in such decisions, they know that the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation does not like to review decisions about family disputes in the North Caucasus.”

She says that in some cases Russian judicial authorities have effectively upheld decisions by lower courts in the North Caucasus to deny the mother custody in favor of the father’s family.

In one example, Luiza Tapayeva’s four daughters were taken away by her husband’s family in Chechnya after his death in 2015. When she sued for custody, claiming that her four daughters had been kidnapped by their grandfather, the Urus-Martan city court decided the children should remain with the grandfather.

To the Legal Initiative’s surprise, Gnezdilova said, “the Supreme Court of Russia upheld this decision, even though the parents have a priority right in the upbringing of their children.”

The Russian government has been obligated in such cases to argue at the ECHR that the mothers’ rights had not been violated by the courts’ reliance on local customs.

“If the Russian authorities in an international court argue that the mother’s rights were not violated by deferring to tradition,” Gnezdilova asked, “then what can we expect from district judges?”

RFE/RL senior correspondent Michael Scollon contributed to this report

Anger spilled onto the streets of Minsk and across Belarus on August 9, 2020, shortly after polls closed and a state-run exit survey pointed to a big victory for Alyaksandr Lukashenka. Protesters marched through the streets of the capital, many facing off against armed riot police who dealt with them brutally.

No election in Belarus under Lukashenka, in power since 1994, had been deemed free or fair by the West, and this one was no different, although the strongman was suddenly more vulnerable than he had been going into past votes. He was under fire for refusing to institute lockdown measures to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic, which he dismissed as “mass hysteria.”

Crisis In Belarus

Read our coverage as Belarusians continue to demand the resignation of Alyaksandr Lukashenka amid a brutal crackdown on protesters. The West refuses to recognize him as the country’s legitimate leader after an August 9 election considered fraudulent.

He was also facing a strong challenge from Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya, a political novice and last-minute fill-in candidate for her jailed husband, Syarhey Tsikhanouski. Her huge campaign rallies had fueled hopes, quickly dashed, that Lukashenka’s decades-long authoritarian rule was nearing an end.

Maryna Zolatava, editor in chief of the country’s most popular news website, the independent outlet Tut.by, was working the editorial desk that day when reports came in of unrest on the streets of Minsk after the polls closed.

“The recollections from August 9 are seared into my mind,” Zolatava told RFE/RL’s Belarus Service in a recent interview, describing the scene “when our reporters in the field began calling in to the editorial office to tell us what was happening in the city.”

“Explosions, gunfire…. I couldn’t believe the things the reporters were telling me,” she said. It was all remarkable, but we didn’t have time to reflect on what was happening.”

The protests, with crowds swelling to as many as 200,000 people in Minsk, have continued ever since, albeit with dwindling numbers. That has been put down to fatigue and the fear instilled by the Lukashenka government’s brutal crackdown. More than 30,000 Belarusians have been detained, and hundreds beaten on the streets and in custody.

Rights groups have documented some 1,000 cases of suspected torture. At least five people have been killed. Tsikhanouskaya was forced to flee to Lithuania after the vote amid threats to her and her family.

For the crackdown and alleged vote rigging, Lukashenka and his inner circle have been hit with sanctions by the United States, the European Union, and others, including Canada.

Lukashenka faces international isolation and is ever more reliant on support from larger, more powerful neighbor Russia, which commentators say is exploiting his weakness to squeeze out more concessions on a union treaty deal that critics say further erode what sovereignty it still possesses.

The practice of independent journalism, long dangerous work in tightly controlled Belarus, has become substantially riskier over the past year. And even journalists at state-run media weren’t safe: Dozens who voiced support for the opposition were thrown out of work and replaced by state TV journalists from Russia.

According to the Belarusian Association of Journalists, 481 journalists were detained in 2020, twice as many than the previous six years combined.

Fear And Courage

Belarus slipped five places, to 158th, in Reporters Without Borders’ (RSF) 2021 World Press Freedom Index. Three journalists were given hard prison time, including two facing two-year prison sentences.

“The authorities are trying to suppress all independent voices and to strike fear into the hearts of journalists,” said Jeanne Cavelier, the head of RSF’s Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk. “RSF hails the courage of those who continue to report on the crackdown in Belarus and calls on international organizations to take action to prevent such harassment and to secure the release of journalists jailed for doing their job.”

During the early days of postelection protests, journalists were not widely targeted by police, Zolatava said — but that changed quickly, and soon police were harassing even those with vests clearing identifying them as “press.”

“At the time I thought, ‘This can’t be!’ But it is, and it should not be so. The administrative arrests had started. It all seemed impossible — the fact that all this was happening was surreal.”

The risk of her reporters being beaten or snatched off the street by police began to weigh on Zolatava. “It wasn’t like that before. Now you’re under constant stress as you try to maintain a state of normality within your team. And you constantly think about how you can guarantee the safety of your people,” she said. “It has greatly changed the job. It doesn’t impact you physically, it’s more like constant psychological pressure. You really have to be prepared for it.”

Long targeted by the authorities for its hard-hitting reporting, Tut.by has found itself under even greater scrutiny over the past year. The Ministry of Information warned the news site over four articles before withholding its accreditation for three months starting on October 1.

Tut.by only registered as a media outlet in January 2019. Before that, it had operated without media credentials since the site’s founding in 2000.

Behind Bars

Despite the growing pressures, Zolatava said her reporting team remains largely intact. “Have people left due to security issues or political problems? Nothing like that has happened. In August, our work underwent huge changes. Everything that happened before and after that has hugely impacted all of our lives,” she said, adding that her reporters were detained 38 times by police in 2020.

One of them was Katsyaryna Barysevich. She was arrested on November 19 after writing an article about Raman Bandarenka, who died several days earlier following a beating by a group of masked assailants. Barysevich disputed the official claim that Bandarenka was drunk, citing medical findings that no alcohol had been detected in his blood.

The doctor who provided the lab results, Artsyom Sarokin, was arrested, tried, and convicted along with Barysevich, ultimately receiving a suspended two-year prison sentence and fine of 1,450 Belarusian rubles ($560) for disclosing medical information. Barysevich was handed a six-month prison term and fined 2,900 rubles ($1,130) for disclosing medical information and instigating a crime by pressuring a first responder to share information.

Katsyaryna Barysevich is seen inside a defendants' cage during a court hearing in Minsk in February. — Katsyaryna Barysevich is seen inside a defendants’ cage during a court hearing in Minsk in February.

“Katsyaryna is in good spirits. Barysevich is someone deserving of admiration. Katya is the best,” Zolatava said. “It is definitely very distressing that she is in there [prison]. And it’s awful that we can’t change that.”

“We are doing our best. We are writing appeals, trying to draw the attention of the international community to the situation of Katsyaryna,” she said, thanking the Belarusian Association of Journalists and human rights activists for their efforts. “But almost five months have passed since November 19, and Katya is still behind bars. And it’s just awful. How can this be happening?”

Barysevich’s arrest and sentencing served as wake-up calls to editors at Tut.by, Zolatava aid. “After Katya’s arrest, we began to discuss our future more often and consult with lawyers. Although, in principle, her arrest did not affect the editorial policy; self-censorship did not increase. Katya did nothing illegal. She did her job, did it as it should be done,” she said.

On April 20, the Minsk City Court upheld Barysevich’s conviction and sentence. She is now scheduled to be released from prison on May 19.

‘Nightmarish Events’

While Barysevich’s was one the harshest sentences, two other Belarusians suffered an even worse fate. Katsyaryna Andreyeva and Darya Chultsova, reporters for Belsat, a Poland-based satellite TV station, were arrested on November 15 while covering a rally in Minsk to commemorate Bandarenka.

A court in Minsk on February 18 found Andreyeva and Chultsova guilty and sentenced them to two years in prison each, sparking international condemnation, with EU foreign affairs spokesman Peter Stano denouncing it as a “shameful crackdown on media.”

Despite the dangers, more people than ever are turning to Tut.by for credible news coverage, although numbers are slipping as weariness creeps in, Zolatava said.

Visits to the site peaked in August, September, and October. By December, they began to dip and the downward trend continues, although there was a blip around March 25 and 27, when Tsikhanouskaya had called for a huge turnout coinciding with the anniversary of the founding in 1918 of the first free Belarusian republic.

“I think there is a fatigue factor with readers. A year ago, the coronavirus appeared, and the situation then was not completely normal. I think people were looking for something a bit lighter. The whole world is now stressed,” Zolatava said.

Maryna takes part in a march of solidarity of journalists in Minsk in September 2020.

Meanwhile, Lukashenka’s government is pushing ahead with more media restrictions. Changes to the country’s mass media law — passed by the rubber-stamp parliament earlier this month — would make it illegal for journalists to “discredit” the state, or livestream mass unauthorized gatherings, among other draconian measures. According to Human Rights Watch, at least seven reporters face trial.

Despite the bleak prospects and pangs of doubt, Zolatava says she is determined to continue her work at Tut.by. “There have been so many nightmarish events, so much that is unfair, that I’ve wondered whether it’s possible to continue the work. The injustice, the fact that so much is horribly illegal, and yet we are still working,” she said.

“On the other hand, what else can we do?” she continued. “We have to continue working so that all that has happened is not forgotten and remains a chapter of our history. So that people will know everything that happened.”

Written by Tony Wesolowsky based on reporting by RFE/RL’s Belarus Service

Long persecuted by Iran’s Islamic regime, followers of the Baha’i faith in Tehran have now been told they must bury their dead upon the mass graves of political prisoners.

The Baha’i community in the Iranian capital has for years buried its dead in a special section of Tehran’s Khavaran cemetery, near the resting place for hundreds or even thousands of political prisoners who were victims of mass executions in the late 1980s.

Cemetery officials have in recent days reportedly told Baha’is that they are no longer allowed to bury their dead in that section of the cemetery.

Instead, they have been given two choices: they can bury their dead in the narrow space between existing Baha’i graves or use the area where the mass graves are located, says Simin Fahandej, the Baha’i International Community representative to the United Nations in Geneva.

Baha’is find the order unacceptable and want to be able to bury their dead with dignity and according to their religious rules. “With the destruction of many Baha’i cemeteries in the past four decades, Baha’is have experienced the pain caused by disrespect to the deceased and they don’t want others to experience the same pain,” Fahandej said in an interview with RFE/RL’s Radio Farda.

He added that this new pressure from the authorities is part of more than 40 years of state repression and discrimination that Baha’is have faced in Iran since the creation of the Islamic republic.

Victims' families attend a remembrance ceremony in Khavaran cemetery in Tehran. — Victims’ families attend a remembrance ceremony in Khavaran cemetery in Tehran.

History Of Persecution

Baha’is — who number some 300,000 in Iran and have an estimated 5 million followers worldwide — have faced systematic persecution in Iran, where their faith is not officially recognized in the country’s constitution.

Since the Islamic Republic of Iran was established in 1979, hundreds of Baha’is have been arrested and jailed for their beliefs. At least 200 have been executed or were arrested and never heard from again — that includes all the members of three National Spiritual Assemblies from 1980 to 1984.

Thousands more have been banned from higher education or had their property confiscated. The community has long had its cemeteries desecrated and its loved ones’ gravestones destroyed.

The latest restriction put on Baha’i burials in Tehran, where most of Iran’s Baha’is live, has also upset the families of the executed political prisoners. They even wrote in an open letter dated April 25 complaining that several new graves had appeared near the site of the mass burials at Khavaran.

“On Friday April 23, while visiting the nameless land of our loved ones, we saw something that was shocking to believe: graves were dug in the mass graves’ site of our loved ones and two Baha’is were also buried in those graves,” said the letter, which was signed by 79 family members of the executed political prisoners.

“It is our right to know the exact burial place of our loved ones,” the letter said, adding that “after being deprived of this right for 40 years, we demand that there won’t be any changes and invasion at this cemetery.”

They also urged the Iranian authorities to refrain from forcing Baha’is to bury their loved ones on the area where the mass graves are located. “Don’t rub salt in our old wounds,” said the letter, addressed to Iranian President Hassan Rohani and Tehran Mayor Piruz Hanachi.

‘Salt In Our Wounds’

In a separate statement, some of the children of the executed prisoners said they opposed “any changes” at Khavaran, calling on the Baha’is not to submit to the order telling them where to bury their dead. “This is not the first time that the Islamic republic has attempted to cover up the remains of its crimes,” the statement said.

Several photos of the purported new graves at Khavaran, including two that had signs and flowers laid on them, have been posted online. The images appeared also to show white lines drawn in the dirt apparently as marks for new graves. RFE/RL cannot verify the authenticity of the images. Reports suggest about 10 new graves have appeared recently at Khavaran’s mass graves’ section.

Amnesty International said in a statement on April 29 that the Iranian authorities had attempted for years to destroy the mass-grave sites of the victims of the 1988 prison executions “in a bid to eliminate crucial evidence of crimes against humanity, denying truth, justice, and reparations to the families of those forcibly disappeared and extrajudicially executed in secret.”

“As well as causing further pain and anguish to the already persecuted Baha’i minority by depriving them of their rights to give their loves ones a dignified burial in line with their religious beliefs, Iran’s authorities are willfully destroying a crime scene,” said Diana Eltahawy, Amnesty International’s deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa.

The executions of political prisoners were carried out in the last days of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War, after the founder of the Islamic republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, declared that apostates and those who had taken up arms against the Islamic republic were “waging war against God” and should be sentenced to death.

The prisoners were sent to their deaths following very brief interrogations by a small group of state officials, dubbed by prisoners as “death commissions.”

The Iranian establishment has rarely acknowledged the executions while also enforcing a news blackout on the issue. They have also repeatedly harassed family members of the victims who seek answers about their loved ones.

The Baha’i faith is a monotheistic religion whose central figure is Sayyed Ali Muhammad Shirazi, better known as Bab, who was executed in Tabriz by the Persian authorities in 1850. Based on the teachings of Persian religious leader Bahaullah, it considers the founders of various faiths — including Buddha, Jesus Christ, and the Prophet Muhammad — as expressions of God.

The central tenet of Baha’is is to promote a “oneness of humankind” that treats people of different nationalities, races, and classes equally.

Elahe Ravanshad of RFE/RL’s Radio Farda contributed to this story

The state prosecutor spearheading a potentially devastating bid to brand Aleksei Navalny’s network of organizations “extremist” is no stranger to the Kremlin foe: In 2019, a report by Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) alleged that the lawman’s family controlled undeclared property worth millions of dollars.

The plaintiff in the case under which the FBK, the Citizens’ Rights Defense Foundation (FPZG), and Navalny’s offices nationwide could be declared extremist is the head of the Moscow city prosecutor’s office, Denis Popov.

Popov’s signature also stands at the bottom of an April 26 order freezing the activities of Navalny’s network of regional branches pending the outcome of the Moscow City Court’s closed-door hearings. His office has also asked the court to do the same with the FBK and the FPZG.

The “extremism” case is not the first time Popov and Navalny have clashed. Popov, 48, was named Moscow prosecutor by President Vladimir Putin in September 2019. Previously, he served as chief prosecutor in the Siberian region of Khakasia and the North Caucasus republic of Daghestan.

Popov was the lead prosecutor in the so-called “Moscow case” in 2019, in which several would-be candidates for Moscow district council seats and their supporters were prosecuted for participating in peaceful protests.

‘Lawful Lawlessness’

Popov “personally initiates cases against oppositionists at the behest of the National Guard,” the FBK report published in November 2019 stated. “The Moscow prosecutor plays a very important role in the listing of all sorts of ‘foreign agents.’ Any lawlessness that you run into in Moscow can be declared lawful by Prosecutor Popov.”

Weeks before the report was published, Popov had filed a suit against the FBK and its leadership, including Navalny, seeking reimbursement of nearly 5 million rubles ($67,000) for costs Moscow purportedly incurred during two unsanctioned protests earlier that year. In particular, Popov tried unsuccessfully to seize Navalny’s modest Moscow apartment.

Kremlin critic Aleksei Navalny at one of his many court hearings in recent years. (file photo)

The FBK report, which featured video and text, provided evidence it said linked Popov and his family to undeclared property in Russia and abroad.

The report found that a Montenegrin company controlled by Popov’s ex-wife, Irina Popova, owned a lakeside apartment complex and other real estate worth, according to a financial document filed in Montenegro in 2018, more than 3 million euros.

‘Money From Who-Knows-Where’

The company was created in 2009 and owned all the property at least as early as 2011, when the Popovs were still married.

“All these Montenegrin investments were planned and made by the family of a working prosecutor, bureaucrat, and guardian of the law,” Navalny’s report stated. “With money that came from who-knows-where.”

According to asset declarations filed in Russia during this period, Popov was earning 58,000 rubles ($1,900) a month and his wife was “unemployed.”

Irina Popova also allegedly purchased an apartment in Spain in 2010 for 645,000 euros. And she purportedly owns a fishing resort in southern Russia’s Astrakhan region.

After searching through social media, Navalny’s investigators unearthed and published photographs of the Popovs and their children at all of the properties they identified.

Navalny’s investigators also found a lavish home in the elite stretch of Moscow suburbs known as Rublyovka registered in the name of Popov’s elderly mother, Lyudmila Popova.

After Navalny’s report was published, two Moscow city council deputies, Communist Yelena Shuvalyova and Yabloko party member Maksim Kruglov, appealed to Putin to investigate the allegations against Popov.

In apparent response, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov assured journalists that Popov’s declarations had been “subjected to serious scrutiny.” He added, however, that the presidential administration might take a second look if it was deemed necessary.

Like the rest of the FBK’s investigations into official corruption in Russia, no probe was launched into the findings about Popov.

In her 2014 book Putin’s Kleptocracy, the late American political scientist Karen Dawisha identified the perversion of the law enforcement system — and particularly the prosecutor’s office — as a key feature of Putin’s political model.

She found that “in the 10 years from 2002 to 2012, hundreds of thousands of businessmen were actually imprisoned, not just questioned or arrested, primarily as a result of rivals paying corrupt police, prosecutors, and judges to put away the competition.”

In the wake of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster on April 26, 1986, parents in the hard-hit regions of Ukraine, Belarus, and western Russia were desperate to get their children out of the irradiated zone, if only for a few weeks.

Ultimately, tens of thousands would spend summer vacations in the West, including Ireland, where a local longtime nuclear disarmament activist was at the vanguard of efforts to help the children of Chernobyl, as they came to be called.

One of those who spent time in Ireland was 14-year-old Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya. Thirty-five years later she is the leader of the beleaguered Belarusian opposition to Aleksandr Lukashenka, the authoritarian long-time ruler she challenged in a presidential election last August.

Tsikhanouskaya, who was forced out of Belarus amid massive protests following the election, in which she and supporters say she beat Lukashenka despite his claim of a landslide victory, now travels across Europe to drum up diplomatic support for the opposition and a new, free and fair election.

But back in 1996 — a decade after the disaster — Tsikhanouskaya was a first-time visitor to the West, taking a trip that both shocked and amazed her.

In an interview with Current Time, Tsikhanouskaya recounted the kindness and hospitality she was shown in Ireland – not to mention the potato chips and ketchup.

Tsikhanouskaya was three years old and lived in the village of Mikashevichy, in the Brest region of western Belarus, when the explosion that destroyed Reactor No. 4 at Chernobyl, to the southeast in Ukraine, spewed windblown radiation over a territory the size of Germany.

A Brief Escape

Hundreds of thousands of people were relocated, and nearly 600,000 so-called ‘liquidators’, many working with no protection, sacrificed their health to contain and seal the fiery reactor, as well as clean the contaminated area.

For children, Chernobyl posed its own unique health risks. Affected areas of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia – Soviet republics at the time — also witnessed “a significant increase in the incidence of childhood thyroid diseases including thyroid cancer,” according to the World Health Organization. For example, thyroid cancer rates rose “about 100 times” in the Belarusian region of Homel after the accident.

In 1991, Adi Roche, active in the Irish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, would establish the Chernobyl Children International (CCI), to provide medical and other aid to the nuclear disaster’s youngest victims, as well as organize trips abroad for many of them.

Adi Roche at a children's home in Belarus. (file photo) — Adi Roche at a children’s home in Belarus. (file photo)

The CCI said it has delivered some 107 million euros of aid to impoverished communities and children across Chernobyl-affected regions since 1986. More than 26,500 children have also traveled to Ireland to stay with host families on rest and recuperation holidays, that, according to CCI’s website, continue to this day.

Modelled after the CCI, the Chernobyl Lifeline also organized trips to Ireland for the youth affected by Chernobyl. In 1996, when she was 14, Tsikhanouskaya was included in one such group.

“I don’t know why I qualified for that program. Probably because I had studied well,” Tsikhanouskaya told Current Time, the Russian-language network led by RFE/RL in cooperation with VOA.

Now 38, Tsikhanouskaya said that even at that time, 10 years after the world’s worst nuclear disaster, few in Belarus – which had gained independence when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 — fully grasped the scale of what had happened at Chernobyl.

“All the time in Belarus, in my hometown, we were taken for tests. Medical teams would come to examine our thyroid glands. At that time, it wasn’t understood the scale of it. Chernobyl, radiation — we heard it at the time, but that at that age we couldn’t comprehend how bad it was,” Tsikhanouskaya recounted.

Belarusian oppostition leader Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya earlier this year.

“That understanding only came later after you could study the topic and then there was the Internet, and you could find out more. Up till then, all you knew came from rumors, from your parents, who themselves didn’t really know much as well.”

The nuclear disaster, however, was apparently far from the minds of most of the children picked for the program, explained Tsikhanouskaya.

“You know, the kids in the polluted zone were happy, because it was an opportunity to go abroad. That’s how it was seen,” she said.

‘Lots Of Kindness, Lots Of Love’

Her first visit abroad, Tsikhanouskaya was awed by much of what she saw and experienced.

“Of course, I was also struck by the people themselves — open, friendly, smiling, saying ‘thank you,’ ‘you’re welcome.’ It was kind of gloomy at home, at least in my town,” Tskikhanouskaya told Current Time. “And then suddenly you arrive at the home of complete strangers, and they treat you like family, lots of kindness, lots of love. They tried to entertain all the kids as much as possible.”

The food, some of which she tasted for the first time, also fascinated her.

“More than anything else, I was surprised by some of the food that we didn’t have – potato chips, french fries, hamburgers,” she said. “Maybe it was already there in the capital of Belarus, but I had never been there with my parents, so it was all unknown to me. I tried ketchup for the first time there, not our tomato sauce, but real ketchup.”

Tsikhanouskaya stayed with the family of Henry Deane, who had organized the group’s trip. She remained in touch with the family afterwards, and he invited her back a few years later to help organize similar trips for others.

“My job was to prepare documents, arrange flights, assign the kids to families. They would call me if there were any problems. If the child was sad, homesick, they called me, and I talked to the child on the phone. If the child needed to go to a doctor or dentist, I was called to go along to act as a translator,” Tsikhanouskaya, who worked as an English teacher and translator before she was thrust into politics ahead of the August 2020 election, recounted.

During her time in Ireland, Tsikhanouskaya had many opportunities to remain there, but said the pull of home was always too strong.

I was and still am very attached to my parents, to home, to those family ties,” she said, and at the time Ireland “just seemed far away” from home. “Now the borders are a bit more open; you get a Schengen visa and can travel at any time and return home. Back then, there were a lot more complications and at the time I picked my family, my parents, and my homeland.”

RFE/RL senior correspondent Michael Scollon contributed to this report

Crisis In Belarus

Written by Tony Wesolowsky based on reporting by RFE/RL’s Belarus Service

Elahe Ravanshad of RFE/RL’s Radio Farda contributed to this story

Written by RFE/RL Senior Correspondent Tony Wesolowsky based on reporting by Current Time Correspondent Alena Shalayeva