Dairy Company Sues AP Journalist for Report about Radioactive Milk (Upd)

On Octo­ber 5, Mask­ous­ki dis­trict court in Min­sk start­ed hear­ing the law­suit that dairy com­pa­ny Milka­vi­ta filed against Yuras Kar­manau, Min­sk-based reporter for the Asso­ci­at­ed Press agency.

Milka­vi­ta rep­re­sen­ta­tives argue that the jour­nal­ist has inflict­ed dam­age to busi­ness rep­u­ta­tion of the com­pa­ny and demand refu­ta­tion of his report not only on the web­site ap.org, but also in some oth­er media. The report “Test finds Cher­nobyl residue in Belarus milk” was pub­lished in AP Exclu­sive on April 25, 2016. How­ev­er, offi­cial reac­tion was that radi­a­tion in the milk was with­in the admis­si­ble norm.

On the first day of the hear­ing, the reporter’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive Siarhei Zikrats­ki motioned to trans­fer the law­suit to the Eco­nom­ic Court of Min­sk. On Octo­ber 6, the judge upheld the motion.

Andrei Bas­tunets, chair­per­son of BAJ, was also admit­ted to the hear­ing as rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Yuras Kar­manau. The plain­tiff is rep­re­sent­ed by lawyer Pavel Kaltunovich.

Judge Ale­na Rud­nit­skaya for­bid pho­tos and video in the court room, and forced out three reporters who tried to take pic­tures dur­ing the process.

BAJ press ser­vice asked Yuras Kar­manau sev­er­al ques­tions: what the details of the case were and why, in his view, the offi­cial reac­tion was so neg­a­tive.

“In our inves­ti­ga­tion, we showed what real­ly was going on in the zone,” says Yuras Kar­manau. In the very zone, in the Poliessie Radioac­tive Reserve, behind the restric­tion fence, there is a state farm breed­ing hors­es. At the moment when the report was pre­pared, the farm had 250 hors­es. And they sold 100 hors­es to a com­pa­ny in Min­sk who adver­tise mare’s milk.

We found a dairy farm near the radioac­tive reserve where cows graze the grass a kilo­me­ter away from the sign Stop! Radi­a­tion! And then the milk is sold to Milka­vi­ta fac­to­ry in Khoini­ki. The test revealed stron­tium sur­pass­ing the norm by 10 times!

Also, we showed how aban­doned vil­lages are laid to waste, and the ter­ri­to­ries are plowed and return into agri­cul­tur­al lands.

Final­ly, we revealed that Belarus has no tests for trans-ura­ni­um ele­ments that, accord­ing to the offi­cial sta­tis­tics, pol­lute around 2 per cent of Belarus. Every­body speaks of the dan­ger of ameri­ci­um. And we don’t even have the tests to detect its pres­ence in prod­ucts.”

“We see that in Belarus Cher­nobyl issue is tabooed. First, milk has become a white oil for the state, export­ed to Rus­sia. Milka­vi­ta exports 90 per cent of its prod­ucts to Rus­sia, to Moscow. And it is essen­tial for the state to show that Belaru­sian milk is safe.

Sec­ond, all attempts to inves­ti­gate the Cher­nobyl zone are faced with mor­bid reac­tion of the offi­cials. The state has closed the issue of Cher­nobyl. “Radi­a­tion is not seen, no one is born with two heads,” told us peo­ple from the farms and zone dwellers.

Mean­time, the offi­cial sta­tis­tics says that occur­rence of thy­roid can­cer among chil­dren is 33 high­er than it used to be before the acci­dent at the Cher­nobyl nuclear plant.”