”Non-professionalism, utter indifference and corruption – these are the three principles of Moscow justice”, says Marina Rodman, member of Ombudsman’s staff, who made a speech together with Alexey Golovan at the press conference in “Mir Novostey” news agency on May 31. In Marina’s words, at the beginning of her service under the Ombudsman she expected reports on child rights violations from neighbors of poor families, school teachers, representatives of social guardianship organizations. However, such applications are few – people do not really care about their neighbors’ lives. For the most part, the complaints are made by children’s relatives in relation of misdeeds, committed by other relatives of the children. Marina Rodman cited a number of exemplary court decisions: a wealthy businessman is allowed to register out and send his own under-age children from previous marriage to a distant village in Orenburg region; some other children are ruled to be evicted from their relatives to their mother’s residence in war-stricken Grozny; a mother with a child was denied compulsory exchange of the apartment, when her former husband, registered at the address, returned from prison and started beating the child… A father of a 3-year-old child was forbidden not only to see his son, living with his mother, but also to require from his ex-wife the information concerning the whereabouts of the child and even his state of health. The court supported the mother who claimed that contacts with his father – a well-in businessperson who had been living with the son until his former spouse married someone else – might aggravate the child’s asthma.

Courts aside, law-enforcing bodies are ruthless towards children as well. Marina Rodman said about the “colonel Budanov syndrome” in some of policemen who, after their return from Chechnya, beat or even evict from their houses wives with children, morally supported by their colleagues, although the suffering people in question are not Chechens. At the same time, people in blue uniform seem to be totally indifferent to exploitation of children as beggars, whereas it is the principle duty of a policeman to pass a detected child in distress to the relevant social establishments. Who knows if the requests of passers-by, watching the rags-clad, lying on the cement floor and more dead than alive children, could change the indifference.

On the other hand, it is quite possible that policemen are more concerned about collection of “street duties” from the little homeless children than about the protection of the children’s rights. Examples are many. As recently as during the May holidays a PRIMA correspondent saw a boy at the metro station “Tushinskaya”, who was persuading the passengers to go to Mitino by taxi vans. The teenager told the curious journalist that, apparently due to the festive occasion, the policeman, holding the control over the 11-15 year old boys, demanded triple payment for the activities (150 rubles instead of usual fee of 50 rubles), but was persuaded out of the idea by the little entrepreneurs.

Nevertheless, the Ombudsman Alexey Golovan is open for public visits on Wednesdays in the Moscow City Duma. In spite of the relevant decree of city mayor Yury Luzhkov, the Municipal Lodging Department hasn’t found premises for the child rights Ombudsman’s office yet.