SEVASTOPOL MOTHERS ON HUNGER STRIKE

A group of Mother-Heroines from Sevastopol has spent a week trying to get attention of president Yushchenko to their plight. They came to the Ukrainian capital with their numerous families. In daytime they picket the Secretariat of Yushchenko. At nights they sleep in the hall of the main railroad station. The women live in squalid conditions in Sevastopol. The authorities promised them apartments back in the nineties but did not deliver on their promises. One of the protesters Antonina Kolobova said that during her first trip to Kiev a year ago, she had been received by Mr. Yushchenko. The president ticked off his men and gave to Kolobova the number of his cell phone. The woman have dialed it many times to hear only the message: “the customer is unavailable”. The protesters are holding a hunger strike. Some of their children who joined their parents passed out and were hospitalized. Ukrainian officials going in and out of the Secretariat either ignore the strikers or shout abuse at the. City official from Sevastopol Baziv insulted the striking mothers. He called one of them a parasite and said that she should sweep the streets instead of complaining.