Как живут сейчас знаменитые на весь мир "Киселёвские канадцы" - люди, год назад обратившиеся к премьер-министру Канады и генсеку ООН за экологическим убежищем? Подробности/more: http://абажур-журнал.рф/blog/kiseljovskie_kanadcy_god_spustja_golodovka_i_beznadjoga/2020-05-14-980 Kiselyovian «Canadians» appeared one year ago, 8 July 2019, when a group of people living in Podzemgaz and Parnikovka districts of Kiselyovsk recorded a video message to the prime minister of Canada Justin Trudeau and the secretary-general of the United Nations António Guterres. Left by god and their country, citizens of Kiselyovsk asked Canada for an ecological refuge. A huge underground fire, or “warming”, as the officials called it, was raging mere meters away from their homes. There is an abandoned mine under the area. The citizens are sure that the coal seams are burning, but the local politicians accuse them of organizing a dump, setting fire to it and expecting new homes from the government. In summer of 2018 in Parnikovka a woman and her daughter were hospitalized with carbon monoxide poisoning. Thankfully, the doctors managed to save them before it was too late. Tatiana recalls with fear: “I took my baby’s hands to help her stand up, but she couldn’t. I stood her up, she told me “mom, I can’t feel my legs” and set back down. I looked her in the eyes, and they were blank. I opened the window, because I thought that it was too hot in the room, and then decided to call the ambulance. It took me some time to focus on the number…” At first, governor Tsivilev accused the “Canadians” of discrediting Kuzbass, if not all of Russia, to the world community, saying that, instead of a sneaky appeal to a foreign government, they could have invited local officials and the governor to an opened dialogue. In response to this surprised Kiselyovites showed piles of official documents that they had sent to the regional administration, all of which were rejected. It all happened right before the “Direct Line with Vladimir Putin”, therefore the head of the state decided to visit the polluted area, after which he confirmed that the fire was underground, and promised to give new houses to 71 families. He took responsibility. However, two months later he changed his mind, and those promised new apartments turned into a prospect of an all-Kuzbass celebration of a Miner’s Day in 2021. After time the well-coordinated group of “Canadians” fell apart. Of course, they managed to “rebel” some more before that: organized the “Kiselyovian tea party” (the chief of city police tried to shut it down), invited an American tourist for a visit (the head of the city wanted to arrest her for filming the mayor’s meeting with the locals). Now, residents of Malinnaya street, where the tea party was held, do not want to protest anymore. “It’s sad that nobody wants to fight anymore. If there were more people, this could have moved forward faster,” – says the Malinnaya street committee chairman Vitaliy Shestakov. He is the only one who has not given up yet. His neighbors grew disappointed in the mayor, the governor, the president, in Trudeau and Guterres, so they left Vitaliy to fight this fight alone. And Shestakov’s stubbornness is not without a reason - those were his wife and child who almost died due to the carbon monoxide poisoning in summer of 2018. On May 13 Vitaliy went on a hunger strike demanding to dig a hole where the alleged fires are located and measure the temperature. The activists take their own measurements from time to time, sometimes getting in conflicts with the security. In mid-April, at a meter depth, the soil was warmed up to 53 degrees Celsius, and this is after the Siberian winter, when the soil completely freezes a meter or two in depth. The so-called “dump” is under the private security company surveillance. Why is that necessary if the fires (pardon, “warming”) are officially not a problem anymore? Some locals suggested going to Moscow on foot, following th...