Antiheptyl activists stage protest in Astana
ASTANA. April 28 (Interfax) - Members of the social movement Antiheptyl have staged a rally outside the Kazakh presidential residence in Astana to protest the launch of Proton rockets from Baikonur Cosmodrome.
More than twenty people, including ten with posters, spent half an hour in the square in front of the residence, an Interfax correspondent said.
The protestors dropped their letter to the president into the post box near the gates to the presidential residence. In it, they urged him to reduce the number of Proton launches from Baikonur.
Then the police loaded the poster-bearing protestors onto a bus and drove them away to a police station.
Antiheptyl's demands are still the same, one of its activists, Musagali Duambekov, told Interfax. "A rocket has been launched today, which is what this protest is about. Our demands are the same: stop Proton launches. We believe that the number of Proton (launches) must be reduced and the rocket modification changed. These demands are not being met, this is why we are out here. Soon, on July 3, is the anniversary of the Proton crash, and we shall continue this work," he said.
There has been a rise in Kazakh public protests against Proton launches from Baikonur since the Proton-M crash with three Glonass-M satellites last July. The rocket fell not far from its launch site and blew up. The launch vehicle carried about 600 tonnes of poisonous heptyl, amyl and kerosene.
Another Proton-M rocket, with a Russian relay satellite, Luch-5V, and a Kazakh communications satellite, KazSat-3, was launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome on Monday.
