ANALYSIS: An inexplicable tragedy in Miensk and its reverberations in Belarus (07/04/99)

ANALYSIS

An inexplicable tragedy in Miensk and its reverberations in Belarus

by David R. Marples

A Sunday afternoon at the end of May in the city of Miensk (population 1.7 million) in warm sunshine and a temperature of 28 degrees C. On the Masherov Prospect young people were gathering. The authorities had organized a beer and rock concert. As I wandered by, stalls were being set up and some youngsters were already beginning to sample the free beer. I walked to the Nemiga metro station some 50 meters away and back to the city center. On three sides of the concert gathering were churches, the most prominent being the twin-steepled Orthodox cathedral up on the hill.

The concert feature was to be the Moscow rock group Mango Mango, scheduled to play in the evening. Just after 8:30 p.m. they started to tune up their instruments and a few minutes later began their first song before the swaying throng of about 2,500. About two kilometers away I was sitting down to dinner with friends when we noticed the sky had begun to darken. More than darken. It was black. And then the heavens opened. From a covered balcony we watched a a howling wind accompanied by torrential rain, hail and dramatic bolts of lightning. It was spectacular, violent and short.

On the Masherov Prospect Mango Mango had just commenced its second song. There was no shelter and the youngsters ran for the Nemiga metro station in the hundreds. The station is also a narrow underground pedestrian passage across the busy six-lane road. Three militiamen were there to keep order.

According to eyewitnesses, girls wearing high heels slipped on the steps leading down to the metro station. Those behind piled over them. Some others, the worse for drink, thought it was a game and flung themselves on the backs of those who had fallen. Those who fell could not get up because of the pressure of people coming from behind.

The next 10 minutes were a scene from hell. The militiamen were simply trampled. At least two metros arrived and unloaded their passengers into the melee. Down the steps and into the dank grey passage bodies were piled three or four high. Those at the top were moving; those at the bottom were still. When the emergency teams arrived they simply loaded the bodies onto trucks from the top downward.

Fifty-four were already dead - 44 of them teenage girls and two militiamen. Over 150 were hospitalized, many of them in critical condition. Parents alerted to the disaster began to gather at the entrance to hospitals, frantic to know whether their children were alive.

Belarusian authorities declared two days of mourning. The state TV interspersed dirges by a choir with news bulletins. A three-car cavalcade hurtled down the main thoroughfare, Skaryna Avenue, on May 31 and President Alyaksander Lukashenka arrived at the metro station. Ashen-faced, he declared that no one should apportion blame for such a tragedy. Alcohol was not the problem. This was a time for grieving. He placed a flower on the steps of the entrance where all the bodies had been piled hours before.

But the reverberations soon began in this poor country torn by political strife and economic decline. Opposition politicians wanted to know why young teenagers were given free beer early on a hot day. And clearly, they said, the concert had been authorized by the presidential administration. The story spread that the tragedy was a sign of God's displeasure at such activities. Hadn't the concert taken place in an area bordered by three churches?

Others said that the death toll had been much higher than 54, that the concert-goers were all drunk and the authorities wished to conceal the higher figure. Mr. Lukashenka, forgetting his earlier remarks, responded by declaring that such accidents happen when there is a lack of order in society. In a city swarming with militia, where people are detained regularly for infringements as minor as making derogatory comments about the president, this was an astonishing comment.

The next morning, like many others, I felt drawn to visit the Nemiga station. I couldn't imagine being trapped in there, suffocated as one wave of bodies poured over another. There were flowers on the railings and on the steps. A small crowd had gathered near the entrance. Some people had lit candles to commemorate the young lives so suddenly and inexplicably extinguished. On a lower step a young girl sat oblivious to all, a flower in her hand.

One could only reflect on the fragility of life here. Ten kilometers to the north is Kuropaty, a mass grave of Stalin's victims. East of the city is Katyn, the memorial to the victims of the 1941-1945 war that resulted in the loss of a quarter of the republic's population. The Chornobyl disaster ravaged the lands to the south of Miensk. And now this inexplicable tragedy at the century's end amid the gloom of the Nemiga station.

Dr. David R. Marples is a professor of history at the University of Alberta.

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