Matveevka residents plan to go on with their struggle against broadening of Moscow-Sochi highway

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is seriously concerned that under the aegis of 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics rights of Russian citizens are broken. This was stated by Brita Worner, an official representative of the IOC, in her telephone conversation with lawyer Evgeniy Arkhipov, chairman of the Association of Russian Lawyers for Human Rights, which is defending the residents of Matveevka village, situated near Moscow.

The call from the IOC headquarters in Geneva arrived after the initiative group of Matveevka residents from the Domodedovo District sent a letter-application, prepared with the help of lawyers from the Association, the President of the IOC Jacque Rogge. In their letter the owners of land estates in the "Matveevka" Garden Noncommercial Cooperative Society called the IOC members to stop the actions of Russian authorities, who break the rights of ordinary citizens in preparation for the Sochi Olympiad.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that the government of the Russian Federation had launched, by means of its building companies, the works to broaden the M4 "Don" high-speed highway in its 52nd kilometre aiming to place fare collection points there, since the traffic will essentially increase towards approach and during the 2014 Sochi Olympiad, and several highway lanes will be made toll.

The works to broaden the Moscow-Sochi M4 highway started last September. But already a couple of weeks later they were urgently suspended, after residents of Matveevka blocked the old Kashira highway. In the place of the would-be construction local residents planted trees, together with the Greenpeace, and named the place the Olympic Alley.

Now, as Svetlana Chernyshova, a resident of Matveevka, told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent, the members of the Cooperative, have noticed some revival of builders' activities in the settlement and suspect that very soon the broadening works can restart. Besides, in the end of last year the Ministry of Transports spoke in favour of tougher sanctions for picketers who block roads by and transfer the penalties for that from the domain of the administrative law into the criminal one with punishments from fines up to 2 years of imprisonment.