About 100 people who participated in clean-up operations after the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster marched 200 kilometers (120 miles) to protest in Moscow Wednesday over moves to cut their benefit payments.
The demonstrators, who walked here from the town of Tula south of Moscow, gathered near the Kremlin, abandoning medals they had received for taking part in the dangerous clean-up.
One of the demonstrators had a heart attack and was taken away by ambulance.
Thousands of people were rushed to the site of the April 1986 accident at the Chernobyl plant in Ukraine to help in cleaning up after one of the nuclear reactors exploded, spreading radioactivity across the area.
Wednesday's protest followed moves in parliament to reduce significantly the benefit payments to the clean-up workers, many of whom complain of health problems resulting from the incident.
"The deputies want to change the laws that protect us," said the president of the Russian-Chernobyl Union, Vladimir Naoumov, one of the protest organizers.
"The clean-up workers have been humiliated for more than four years," he complained on the RTR public television station.
The protestors were received by Labor Minister Alexander Pochinok, who promised to maintain the workers' benefits, the ORT television reported.
The Chernobyl workers currently receive between 1,000 and 20,000 rubles (36-720 dollars) per month and the legislation currently before the lower house of parliament would set a ceiling of 5,000 rubles, according to Alexander Velikin, a legal adviser for an association for Chernobyl victims.
The 1986 explosion at Chernobyl remains the world's worst civilian nuclear accident.
Officially, 31 people died from exposure to radiation, but unofficial estimates put the indirect death toll at between 15,000 and 30,000 – MOSCOW (AFP)
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