Villagers hurl stones at evacuees
Ukraine’s effort to quarantine more than 70 people evacuated from China over the new virus outbreak plunged into chaos yesterday as local residents opposing the move hurled stones at the evacuees and clashed with police.
Officials deplored the violence and the country’s health minister pledged to share evacuees’ quarantine for two weeks in a bid to reassure protesters who fear they will be infected.
Buses carrying evacuees were finally able to reach the designated place of quarantine after hours of clashes. The masked evacuees, exhausted by the long journey, were peeking through bus windows as they drove slowly under a heavy police escort.
Stones shattered a window in one of the buses, but the evacuees appeared unhurt.
Since the early morning, several hundred residents of the village of Novi Sanzhary in Ukraine’s central Poltava region had cut the road to a sanitarium intended to host the evacuees, fearing they could become infected. Demonstrators, some of whom appeared drunk, put up road blocks, burned tyres and clashed with riot police who moved to clear access. One protester tried to ram police lines with his car.
Nine police officers and one civilian were hospitalised, the regional police said in a statement.
Ukrainian police said 24 protesters were detained. Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, who personally visited the site to try to calm the crowd, said he was shocked by the aggression.
‘‘What we saw was shameful,’’ he said in televised remarks. ‘‘It was one of the biggest disappointments in my life.’’
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy weighed in, saying the protests showed ‘‘not the best side of our character’’.
He tried to reassure people that the quarantined evacuees would not pose any danger to local residents.
In a statement published on his Facebook page, Zelenskiy said the people evacuated from China were healthy and would live in a closed medical centre run by the National Guard in the village as a precaution.
‘‘In the next two weeks it will probably be the most guarded facility in the country,’’ Zelenskiy said.
Ukraine’s health minister, Zoryana Skaletska, said she would join the evacuees in quarantine for two weeks to help assuage villagers’ concerns. She urged residents to show sympathy and support for the evacuees and emphasised that the quarantine facility is in full conformity with international standards.
‘‘I was shocked by the panic, rejection, negative feelings and aggression,’’ she said. ‘‘It was even a greater shock for the people who were evacuated from China.’’
But municipal legislators in the village vowed to continue opposing the evacuation, saying that the sanitarium’s sewerage system is linked to the one in the village and ends up in a nearby wastewater facility.
‘‘We can’t allow putting the health and life of local residents at risk, and demand that top officials take urgent moves to prevent people from China from being put here,’’ they said.
Amid the clashes between local residents and police, Ukraine’s Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk said he would fly to the site to personally oversee things.
In the early hours of yesterday, a plane with 45 Ukrainians and 27 foreign nationals took off from Wuhan, the epicentre of the outbreak that has infected more than 75,000 people worldwide and killed over 2100. Those evacuated included people from Belarus,
Kazakhstan, Argentina, Ecuador, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Panama and other countries.
Argentina’s Foreign Ministry thanked Ukraine for its ‘‘generosity’’ and China for its collaboration.
The plane stopped in Kazakhstan to drop off Kazakh passengers. Later, it sought to land in Kharkiv, a city in northeastern Ukraine, but could not because of bad weather. Instead it flew to Kiev to refuel, and eventually arrived in Kharkiv. – AP