L'Empire des steppes Série-Collection : Les Empires oubliés

Karel Prokop
2001 - 54 min - Betacam - Couleur - France

For decades, the Soviet power has used the vast stretches of land in Central Asia for nuclear explosions, chemical and bacteriological weapons' experimentation fields, highly polluting industries, and the resettlement of undesired populations.
Entire regions, especially in Northern Kazakhstan, have accumulated so much radiation and chemical pollution in the soil that the mortality rate, the illness, the genetic mutations, the physical deformations at birth, and the psychic deficiency have reached dramatic proportions unparalleled anywhere else in the world.
Newly independent Kazakhstan tries to deal with this heavy coast by banking on the exploitation of its natural resources. But the ecological problems remaining, as the dramatic drying out of the Aral sea point out, are still very worrying.