Ecological Camp in Sevastopol

From August 7 to September 7th a month long ecological camp was organised in the Crimean town of Sevastopol. Focus of the protest was the local company Avlita, who want to build four coal terminals not far from the very centre of town. Together with the town administration, who give profit and investment in the city precedence over its citizens’ health, Avlita are in cahoots against the local population who are almost unanimously opposed to the project, despite the employment opportunities it brings.
The building of the coal terminals infract on various laws. The degree of pollution the construction of the terminal alone will cause should be proscriptive in Sevastopol, which is a UNESCO site of world heritage. For the construction 350 cube metres of earth need to be excavated, which will cause the pollution of the water of the bay to a point where it leads to the death of all fauna in it, and this is without mentioning the subsequent degradation of air quality that four coal terminals in one city imply for its inhabitants.
The construction of such a terminal may seem a mere parochial concern at first sight, but also on a worldwide level coal as a non-renewable energy contributes significantly to droughts, bush fires, storms and inundations, and coal terminals around the world are repeatedly the target of protest actions of environmental organisations such as Greenpeace. And for understanding this large Eastern European country, the building of this coal terminal offers an excellent snapshot view of the political processes of Ukraine as a whole, a country wearing the cloak of a democratic regime, but de facto reined by concerns for profit.
Since a 2008 census Rinat Akhmetov, the owner of the company Avlita, is officially the richest man of Europe. He has long been the most important of Ukraine's “oligarchs”. “Oligarchs” are those individuals who during the de-nationalisation process of the Soviet state economy of the 1990's were close to power centres and as a result got criminally rich. In today's Ukraine, the three largest political parties are all being supported by their own network of oligarchs. As the richest and most influential oligarch of the country, Mr. Akhmetov is by some considered the most powerful man of the country as such. The political party Mr. Akhmetov is close to is the “Party of the Regions”, headed by his personal friend, Ex-president Yanukovich. This party traditionally dominates in Crimea, and the incumbent mayor in Sevastopol's townhouse is indeed a representative of it.
The EU plays an indirect, but strongly paradoxical role in the political situation of the country. In the early nineties Western countries and organisations kick-started the independence era by advocating the opening of a market economy as the panacea to all Soviet ails. The policy continues to this day. Since 2005, under the European Union's Neighbourhood Policy, the EU keeps encouraging free market reforms in Ukraine, but since actual membership is not an issue for Brussels anymore, it lacks the mechanisms to offer incentives to reign in excesses and push the country further on the road to real democracy.
In Sevastopol, the decision to build the four coal terminals was made public in 2007, and construction has begun since. The local population’s indignation about the terminal has already been instrumentalised by political parties, who try to improve their rating with the Crimeans especially in view of the on-coming presidential elections. However, locals are painfully aware that these parties are part of the same political system under the sway of businessmen. People are now coming to realise that the development of civil society, and not the least the ecological movement, is crucial to assure the exertion of public rights (and this not only after it has become clear that the Orange Revolution's promises of a more democratic society were hollow ones). Since 2007 a citizens’ committee formed, whose conflict with the company has lasted for almost the entire two years. The struggle has also drawn in regional ecological organisations, but their activities are continuously undermined by the authorities. The participants of the ecological camp that was organised this summer got to feel what this means. Undercover police were present at each of its informational pickets and demonstrations, local aides were intimidated by telephone, and the tent camp where the activists lodged had to move location twice because of police harassment, even though the participants knew they had the full support of the local population. It’s a bleak balance for a country officially aspiring to become less of a police state, and more of a fully-fledged democracy.