If, as the authorities claim, they have dealt with the scourge of illegal and horrifically dangerous mines, then there are also no miners working illegally. Such officially non-existent men have no protection and, therefore, in the case of accidents, are often simply left to die. Real men, with families, though they in turn are likely to remain silent since their sons, husbands or fathers were indeed working illegally, trying to earn a living in an area of shocking poverty.
According to Kostyantin Ilchenko from the Solidarity Labour Movement, the fire on Feb. 2 at one of the kopanki [illegal mines] in the village of Pavlovka was unusual only in the fact that it could not be concealed and that fire engines and rescuers turned up.
“The people of Donbas know that such things happen often enough but the authorities, the police and prosecutor prefer to stay silent, trying to conceal cases of terrible injury or deaths of workers.” As mentioned, this can entail literally filling in mine shafts or simply abandoning miners underground to die, like at the Zakhidna Mine.
It is no small matter to oppose illegal mining in the Donbas area. In July 2010, Gennady Fimin from the civic organization Our Choice was beaten with baseball bats, ended up in intensive care, nearly died and needed several operations. Prior to this, Fimin had approached the police, prosecutor and SBU [Security Service of Ukraine] demanding that the illegal mining be stopped and those responsible for such mines be prosecuted.
The Solidarity Labour Movement is also untiring in its efforts to stop the mining. Last year, Prystyuk came up with a new line. All the illegal mines had been closed, and only those which had “received licenses” were now working legally.
Ilchenko is scathing: the illegal mines are destroying the environment and undermining the economy, and any license must be based on serious permits following safety checks, geological surveys etc. It is inconceivable that a license would be issued to mines regularly using illegally obtained explosives. Just in one Sverdlovsk kopanka in 2011, the police, responding to a report from the nongovernmental organization Our Choice, removed 150 kilograms of illegal explosives.
Ilchenko says that back in September last year, his organization filmed the mine which went up in flames on Feb. 2, as well as the miners who died. In September, it was all quite different: the territory was guarded and various measures were used to conceal the fact that coal was being extracted. He asserts that the camouflage appeared after the governor and Minister of Fuel and Energy Yury Boiko flew over the area in a helicopter, and suggests that they didn’t like what they saw.
Solidarity suspects that powerful businesspeople and politicians are controlling the business.
The allegations are extremely serious and should not be taken lightly. Public attention is needed to force real measures against illegal mines and effective slave labour so that men can provide for their families without facing the ever-present risk of being left to die when shoddy illegal structures cave in.
Halya Coynash is a member of the Kharkiv Human Rights Group.
