The Baby Cemetery

The Baby Cemetery

Twelve years later, and still...fresh flowers.

No one spoke English at the Internet cafi©. Not even "hello." I knew what I had to do. Behind a desk in the center of the room sat an ogre of a man. I coughed to get his attention.

Michael Kennard , Sumgait, Azerbaijan

Date Posted: 08/09/06

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In Sumgait, Azerbaijan there is a cemetery with a special section where only children are buried. Infants, toddlers, and adolescents that had the misfortune to be born in the most "ecologically devastated place in the world," or so the scientists say. In 1992, the Azeri State Committee of Ecology officially declared the area an "ecological disaster zone," and rumors abound that Sumgait once held the notorious title of highest infant mortality rate in the world. Most people spend their free time where it's warm and the drinks have umbrellas. I was in Central Asia trying to learn about oil.

During the Soviet-era, Sumgait was the paradigm for communist industrialization. Over 45,000 workers toiled in the factories and chemical plants that sprawled across the vast, desert landscape of the Apsheron Peninsula. Their labor churned out immeasurable amounts of aluminum, fertilizers, synthetic rubbers, industrial detergents, ammonia, heavy metals, chlorine, acids, all of which were voraciously consumed by the insatiable Soviet economy. In their haste to modernize, production quotas trumped environmental safeguards. Efficiency was prized over all else; human lives were tacitly relegated to a subservient level. The inevitable industrial waste produced was shipped to the city dump, or just piled high in a vacant lot and forgotten about.

The Soviet's myopic policies have left a chilling legacy in Sumgait: unprecedented ecological ruin. The corollary of their negligence is that over 70% of the city's residents are afflicted by some ailment associated with environmental pollution or factory working conditions.

But it is the children who have suffered the most. The CIA estimates an infant mortality rate of 81.74 per thousand live births. The Azeri government modifies the rubric by giving the statistic per population. Thus, they come up with a significantly lower and less alarming statistic: 25 infant deaths per thousand. Statistical manipulation aside, the cumulative effects of the environment on the Apsheron Peninsula's residents are astounding. Over half of the city's children suffer from asthma, and the rate of defects on development hovers at around 60 per thousand.