On Sunday evening, about 100 people gathered to protest across from the Sochi railway station, many with their children. Posters were raised that read “government of the RF, step down!”, “the government is scorning the people!”, “the Olympic law is against the constitution!” and others.

Addressing the crowd, lead protesters explained that entire families in Sochi were being thrown out onto the streets, their homes and land being taken away, and their belongings crushed by bulldozers – in their words, hundreds of Sochi residents have been made homeless.

Much was said about the lawlessness of the judicial and executive branches of government, corruption in the law enforcement system, and that the ruling party will use any excuse to drive out Sochi residents if it means there will be more room for the wealthy. The protesters also issued a call for people to not vote for the “anti-people” party United Russia in upcoming parliamentary elections.

Irina Brovkina, who organized the event, said local authorities have thus far ignored their protests because the group has been speaking out against the leading United Russia party.

Despite an invitation from organizers, no officials from the United Russia leadership showed up at the protest.

The protesters suffered from numerous provocations during their demonstration, with groups of young people verbally harassing them and two passers-by attempting to grab their megaphone and shout pro-United Russia slogans.

The preparations for Sochi to host the 2014 Winter Olympics have been fraught with violations to human and civil rights, labor rights, and the environment almost since day one. A federal law regulating the organization of the preparation for the games was passed in December 2007, which has then been amended to include provisions allowing land and property to be confiscated by the state if it lies in the way of plans for Olympic facility construction. According to the amendments, a property owner has one month to decide what amount of compensation he wants for his property, which will then undergo analysis by an independent assessor contracted by the state-owned corporation Olimpstroy and the Krasnodarsky Krai regional government. If the amount of compensation does not suit the owner, the case is to be looked at by a court, whose decision is to be immediately carried out.

However, many families have complained that the amount of compensation proposed by the authorities is low or that alternative housing – in rural mountain villages or adjacent to airport radar beacons – is incomparable to their homes in the seaside Imeretinskaya Valley.

Meanwhile, according to Kasparov.ru, Russian authorities say that the problem of compensating the evicted residents is practically resolved.

The prime minister arrived in the Black Sea city of Sochi on Wednesday to check on preparations for the 2014 Winter Olympics. As part of his visit, Putin inspected housing being built for the evicted Imeretinskaya residents – approximately one thousand families coming from 628 houses and 369 apartments.

The residents have been protesting the unfair conditions of their eviction for years, holding demonstrations, hunger strikes, and filing suits with the European Court of Human Rights. The complaints range from the unlawful basis of the evictions to unfair compensation for their confiscated property.

At the same time, Prime Minister Putin has assured officials from the International Olympic Committee that the evicted residents are content with their new housing.

“The people are satisfied. I have to speak honestly: many of these people didn’t live in these conditions earlier,” said the prime minister. The new housing plans by Olympstroy, the state corporation responsible for Olympic construction, provide for 526 houses and several apartment buildings.

The evicted Imeretinskaya Valley residents were given the choice to take either the new housing or monetary compensation equal to the value of their property. If the new housing is worth less than a family’s previous property, then it is also entitled to additional compensation.

However, many residents say that the Olympstroy housing – located in mountainous villages near airport radars – is simply unacceptable compared to their own, high-quality homes closer to the sea. Moreover, many say that the monetary compensation they’re receiving is far below the actual market value they should be getting.

Despite these ongoing issues, the Russian authorities have told Olympic officials that the problems surrounding the eviction of the Imeretinskaya residents have already been resolved.

Construction for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi includes plans for 13 new or reconstructed sports facilities, 4 ski resorts with tracks more than 150 kilometers in length, 8 kilometers of ski lifts, and more than 100 hotels with 27,000 rooms.

The Russian authorities have been severely criticized by not only evicted residents, but by ecologists, geologists, human rights organizations, oppositionists, and numerous other experts for a host of problems ranging from unprecedented damage to Sochi’s unique natural environment to rights abuses against construction workers. Ecologists note with particular concern that parts of the Caucasian State Nature Biosphere Reserve, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, has already undergone irreparable damage.

One member of the settlement told the Kasparov.ru online newspaper that the dozens of residents on hunger strike are demanding that Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin come to the valley to meet with them, since “nothing is being resolved on the local level.”

Negotiations are currently underway between the protesters and regional official Aleksandr Zhigalko. Police officers were also on the scene of the hunger strike on Wednesday.

Boris Nemtsov, a former Deputy Prime Minister and Sochi native who lost his April 2009 bid for Sochi mayor to Kremlin-backed candidate Anatoly Pakhomov amidst numerous fraud allegations, explained on his blog how the hunger strike should come as no surprise considering the travails put upon thousands of Imeretinskaya Valley residents since the region was picked to be one of the primary sites for the Olympics:

The reason for the hunger strike is that people are being required to pay 2 to 5 million rubles [$64-159 thousand] out of pocket for a forced move to new housing. For this, the authorities, in a way that is particularly perverse, are offering to “help” the disadvantaged by arranging mortgages for them.

The people have been driven to despair, which is understandable.

For long years they lived in their homes by the sea, grew fruits and vegetables on their plots of land, raised their children, worked, studied, and didn’t plan on going anywhere.

Then Putin decided to hold the winter Olympics in the subtropics, that is to say there in the Imeretinskaya Valley – in the warmest place not only of Russia, but of the city of Sochi.

Then the epic of resettlements began.

The draconian “Olympic law” was adopted that allows evictions from houses and seizures of land to be done by force. They began to intimidate people by saying that OMON riot police were going to come and throw them out all through the night. Then they built poisonous phenol houses in [the resettlement area of] Nekrasovka (they had a few victims in the Lame Horse [night club fire]). Then they valued the homes to be worth 33-35 thousand rubles [$1052-1116] per cubic meter, while the homes where the people live now are worth 20-25 thousand rubles [$638-798] per cubic meter. Then they demanded that they pay the difference.

The Olympics are a celebration.

The games themselves and preparations for them cannot be accompanied by harassment and violence. It contradicts the Olympic Charter and the spirit of the Olympic movement.

Whey must people suffer for Putin’s Olympic fraud?

It is worth noting that in March 2010, the newspaper Gazeta reported that workers building the resettlement homes in Nekrasovka were fired after striking in response to managers withholding their pay. The workers who remained, says the newspaper, have had to resort to selling their personal items to afford bread. Others have handed their passports over to store owners as collateral for food, making it impossible for the workers, some of whom hail from parts of Siberia, to leave Sochi before paying back their debts. The Nekrasovka workers went on strike after workers at a second resettlement site went on hunger strike for the same reason.

The workers in question were brought in from all over Russia, including parts of Siberia, to building cottages for residents now being evicted from their homes to make way for new Olympic construction in Sochi’s picturesque Imeretinskaya Valley. The contractors and subcontractors who hired them have received millions of rubles from the government since December 2009, but have not paid their workers in more than three months.

The general contractor for the cottage project, Mosconversprom, said that the delays in paying the workers were largely a result of “dragged-out transfers of documents to subcontractors.” They also placed blame on Olympstroy, Russia’s state-owned corporation tasked with managing construction for the Olympics, for not sending Mosconversprom its allocated funding.

The contractors said on Monday that they were able to convince some of the workers to end their hunger strike, promising to pay them on March 24. Others continued their protest, which has now been ongoing since March 11.

Russia’s plans for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi have been controversial since then-President Vladimir Putin made the bid in 2007, but they have been pushed into the spotlight in the wake of Russia’s poor performance in the Vancouver Olympic Games. Critics have questioned the viability of holding the Olympics in Sochi, given its status of a small resort city that largely lacks the infrastructure needed for the games. Residents of hundreds of buildings in the Imeretinskaya Valley region have been protesting their eviction and the destruction of their homes, some of which have seen seven generations of the same families, for years now. The World Wildlife Foundation recently withdrew its support from the games because of ongoing environmental damage being caused to Sochi’s unique natural environment, with UNESCO and Greenpeace also vocal with similar criticisms.

Russia’s Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, told press that the pair will discuss European security, including missile defense and the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty. The two countries have been locked at an impasse on US proposals to locate defense systems in Poland and the Czech Republic, with Russia threatening to point its nuclear warheads at Europe if the plans go through.

Bush and Putin have had a friendly personal relationship, even as rhetoric on either side of the Atlantic has escalated in tone. At their first meeting, Bush was jovial, saying: “I looked the man in the eye. I was able to get a sense of his soul.”

Still, critics of the Kremlin have argued that Bush has failed to voice concerns at the erosion of democratic and human rights that has taken place in Russia since Putin took office. Their final meeting, framed by a resort mired in a controversial program of evicting area residents, may exemplify that point.

As the Sobkor®ru news agency reported on March 27th, some four thousand Sochi residents are under threat of forcible eviction from their homes. Authorities need to free up space for the construction of a new Olympic park. Residents claim the compensation offered for their property is minimal, and that many families will receive no compensation at all.

The first round of evictions has already begun, with the displacement of 15 refugee families from the neighboring break-away Republic of Abkhazia, The Sunday Times newspaper reported.

Some two hundred construction projects are planned for Sochi in the next seven years, including sporting facilities, railroads, highways, as well as a new airport. This makes for an expensive endeavor, with experts expecting costs to rise as high as 24 billion dollars, or double the current estimates. (By comparison, the 2006 winter Olympics in Turin, Italy cost approximately 3 billion dollars, and the 2010 games in Vancouver, Canada are estimated to cost around 4 billion dollars). As result, real estate prices in Sochi and the surrounding areas have grown by 500 percent, making them some of the highest in Russia.

The News.rin.Ru news agency spoke with Andrei Loginov, one of the residents facing eviction:

“When we found out that Sochi won the bid, we were beside ourselves with joy,” he explained. “We thought that this would bring investment to the city, and would create new jobs. Now we understand that only a small chosen group will become rich, and the ordinary people like us will be left standing by the broken washtub.”