Hungry Kharkiv protesters may face criminal charges for blocking a road

According to the newspaper Segodnya, the Head of the Kharkiv Department of the Ministry of the Interior, Mykola Fomenko has stated that criminal proceedings may be initiated against workers of the State enterprise – the Kharkiv Shevchenko Instrument-making Factory. On Monday morning they blocked the road in protest at not having been paid. 

The Head of Police called blocking the road “an administrative and a criminal offence” and warned that they would be gathering material and would initiate a criminal investigation if there were the elements of a crime.

He made no comment about a situation where employees of a state-owned enterprise have not been paid now for a long time.  For a second year now the factory has been on the verge of bankruptcy.  The staff arrived for a picket at 7 o’clock on Monday morning, but two hours later decided to block the October Revolution St. where the depot for three trams is situated.  The road was blocked for around 3 hours. The protesters were bitter in their response to indignation that they were breaking the law.

“And the fact that we haven’t been paid, is that not also a breach of the law?”  “We last saw any money on 30 December. Some got 200 UAH then (less than 20 Euros – translator), some less than a hundred”, one protester said. Yevdokiya Sereda who works at the factory arrived at the picket with a document confirming what period she was owed money for – the total came to 10, 947.

From a report at http://segodnya.ua/news/14234070.html