31 March 2008, 16:32
The Times: 4000 to lose homes because of Sochi Olympiad
In the opinion of Mark Franketti, an observer of British The Times newspaper, the fact that at construction of the objects for the Sochi-2014 Winter Olympic Games several hundreds families will lose their homes is casting a shadow on the preparation thereto.
In the course of preparation for Winter Olympics-2014 to be held in the Black Sea resort city of Sochi, over 4000 persons can be evicted from their houses, the edition writes. According to local activists, many of them will get practically no compensation.
"Five generations of my family lived in this place," says Dmitri Drosichev, head of the community of Old Ritualists. "And now we are offered a small share of what the land really costs. Let my house be ruined by bulldozers together with me, I wouldn't move."
On March 29, about 300 local residents of the Imereti Lowland, where most of the sporting objects for the Sochi Olympiad are planned to construction, held a protest action in the helicopter landing ground near "Rossiya" state farm.
"Our demand is to leave us where we are. The Olympiad should adapt to us, not we - to the Olympiad," Dmitri Drosichev said to the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent. "The authorities promised not to touch people, and now it turns out that a certain 'park zone' will be built instead of our village."
"The authorities have already begun to force people out of their homes, where they plan to erect Olympic objects," Mark Franketti complains. "Fifteen families of refugees from the war that had burst out in neighbouring Abkhazia, who had been living in Sochi suburbs for 15 years, have been already evicted. Now, they have nowhere to go."
"The offer us a land plot somewhere in the mountains and indemnification that is 15 times smaller that the present market value of our land," The Times quote Dmitri Drosichev.
