Quotable notes

"... Twenty years ago today the nuclear power plant in Chornobyl located only 128 kilometers north of Ukraine's capital Kyiv ignited spewing poisonous radioactive gases into the air. This devastating disaster released 400 times the amount of radiation that was released in Hiroshima, Japan.

"In the days following the explosion, the Communist elites of the Soviet Union secretly and quietly removed their families from nearby Kyiv and Miensk. Meanwhile, the children of those cities marched in obligatory May Day parades celebrating the grand achievements of communism. In those sun-drenched days as crowds watched and the children marched outside, within the sun's warm rays hid a terrible fate.

"In the years that followed, doctors in Kyiv have explained to me the instructions they received on how they were not to register stillbirths so as to falsify statistics. I've listened to young women too fearful of bearing new life into this world because their bodies are poisoned. I've held the hands of children, bodies twisted by the radiation. ...

"Ladies and gentlemen, how many have died as a consequence of Chornobyl? Is it 6,000 or 60,000? Can we quantify the human agony? We cannot. But we can remember and take stock of humanity's failings."

- Borys Wrzesnewskyj, member of Parliament for Etobicoke Center speaking on April 26 in the House of Commons and at the solemn Chornobyl Remembrance Ceremony organized by the Children of Chornobyl Canadian Fund.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, June 4, 2006, No. 23, Vol. LXXIV

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