Paul
Goble
Staunton, April 12 – Protests in the
Russian north against Moscow’s degradation of the environment of their regions
by its incautious development of an environmentally sensitive region and its
plans to make things worse by disposing of trash from the capital there are becoming
the trigger for broader and more political protests.
In Karelia, Andrey Tuomi reports,
environmental protests are becoming political with those taking part raising ever
more difficult questions for the powers that be as people connect the dots and
recognize that the destruction of the environment they oppose is linked to
Moscow’s policies more generally (region.expert/ecopolitics/).
Such moves from environmental
protection to political protest were a frequent occurrence in the last years of
the Soviet Union, although they often passed through or were accompanied by movements
about historical preservation as well. But in the Russian north now, this
process may take some time and there are many things the regime can do to
restrict it. (See windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2018/03/putin-positioned-to-hijack.html.)
But while trash protests have
attracted more media attention, environmental activism in the North has now
focused on one issue that is far more immediately important to officials in the
Russian capital – the disposal of nuclear waste products.
The Sibreal portal reports that “residents of the rural settlement of
Khatanga in the furthest northern part of Krasnoyarsk Kray are demanding a
referendum: people there are against the transportation of and planned disposal
in their settlement of radioactive waste products of rare earth metals” (sibreal.org/a/29867721.html).
Yury Tyutrin, a local resident who
edits the Khantanga website, says, that people are rising in revolt over these
plans and “thank God for that.” Russia doesn’t need these rare earth minerals:
they are being produced only to make money by export; and those who are doing
that are doing so “at the expense of our health and the health of our children.”
He adds that residents, having had
their fears confirmed by specialists, are “to speak honestly, now in a state of
panic and shock.” They are also infuriated
by the Russian firm’s effort to frighten them into silence by saying the town
won’t exist at all if it doesn’t agree to have these waste disposal sites on
its territory.
“Khatanga has been standing for
almost 400 years,” Tyutrin says. “We
have a port and air connections always have worked normally.” We can survive
without these dumps. Indeed, he suggests, residents will be better off because
they are less likely to sicken and die.
Residents are also upset that no one
will take responsibility for saying that the company can put the wastes there,
Gennady Shchukin, the head of the Association of Social Movements of the
Indigenous Numerically Small Peoples of the North of Taymyr’s Dolgano-Nenets
district. And they fear that as a result, bad things will happen and no one
will stop them.
The experience of Sakha is both
instructive and frightening in that regard. Olga Timofeyeva-Tereshkina, head of
the Association of the Dolgans of Sakha, says that places in her area were
forced to accept such nuclear wastes and now people are dying at 50 of leukemia
and other former of cancer.
To prevent that from happening or at
least happening without their views going on the record, residents of Khatanga
plan to conduct a referendum on whether they approve such disposal
locations. Activists say they expect
pressure against them to increase over the five to six months it will take to
prepare that effort.
But they have no confidence that
meetings with the Russian company involved will lead to a positive outcome; and
they hope that their efforts at direct democracy will attract the kind of broader
attention that the firm will not be able to avoid. No one should die of cancer
so that a company can make a profit.
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