The recent visit of Hungarian nationalist leader Tamas Sneider has caused a negative reaction of international community because of his notorious and highly provocative statements.
Though Sneider’s visit was declared as the gesture of solidarity and respect for Hungarian culture and traditions in the territory of Transcarpathia region, the speech of Sneider was dedicated to ecological problems of Mujievo village of Beregovo region, and it suddenly transformed into the demand for large autonomy for Transcarpathia region. Ecological issue was transformed into political one. It caused another great damage to Kiev-Budapest mutual relations.
Such quick change of the agenda is quite usual for Hungarian right-wing activists – Hungarian politicians have been using the topics of “violation of Hungarian’s rights”, “economic problems of Transcarpathia region”, as well as “ecologic problems” to obtain autonomy for Transcarpathia region.
During his speech, Sneider mentioned that the residents of Mujievo village invited him, because the local businessman used dumps of a neighborhood goldmine to reconstruct road to the village, and it allegedly may cause radioactive contamination of lands.
It worth mentioning that the problem of dumps disposal from Mujievo goldmine has a long history, but even local politicians with Hungarian origin have never raised an issue on the radioactive contamination for the territories. Moreover, the local investor provided construction of solar electric power stations and used dumps from the goldmine to reconstruct the local road. It caused the protests of local residents, because they were afraid of possible contamination of ground water and reclamation engines. On April 12, 2019 the meeting of Mujievo mayor Vasyl Fitsay, Vary village mayor Elemir Sholomon, experts of State institution “soils protection institution of Ukraine” and local residents took place. The local residents got ultimate proofs that using of dumps and stones for road reconstruction is a safe technology.
Approximately, at that time, the action group of residents of Beregovo region received the result of expertise, done by Hungarian SGS Hungaria Kft, which denied the possibility of radioactive danger of samples taken from Mujievo road though there were some heavy metals in. However, it is just the result of cyanidation of the gold at Mujievo goldmine (the process of extraction of the gold from the cooper-bearing compositions). This technology was used in Mujievo goldmine for almost 50 years and it did not harm neither life nor health of the village residents.
Nevertheless, T.Sneider decided to use highly doubtful statement about “ecological danger” for Transcarpathia to achieve political goals. At the same time, his unproved and scandalous statements about radioactive danger for Transcarpathia region have become the basis for political debates and appeal for Transcarpathia autonomy!
Frankly speaking, such manipulation is inappropriate for politician of a country – a member of the European Union. Sneider’s Hungarian colleagues and European politicians should be deeply concerned about it.
