Little “breadwinners”

“Please give me some money for my child’s medical treatment!” A gypsy woman tearfully addresses the passengers in a subway car. She holds a baby so sound asleep it seems to be dead. Some passengers look the other way, while others give her a few coins or bills.

In giving money to this beggar woman, kind-hearted people have no idea that they are helping the businessmen who hired this mother and her child, and that such beggars bring them much more money than the best- paid among us can earn. Police officers say that most of the babies with such “mothers” have been abducted and that they are drugged so that they don’t cry. That is why these babies are constantly asleep. As a result, they seldom live more than a year. After the death of the little “breadwinner” the malefactors look for their next victim. The police are asking citizens not to give these “beggars” any money.

According to Anatolii Bazhchivanzha, head of the Criminal Militia’s Juvenile Department at Ukraine’s Ministry of Internal Affairs, there is no legislation for prosecuting those who hire or force minors to beg on the street. The department is proposing an amendment to the Criminal Code of an article entailing the responsibility of persons (parents and third parties) who force children to beg. Bazhchivanzha believes that the guilty parties should be sentenced to several years in prison. Law enforcement officers are convinced that this is the only way to combat the begging racket.

This year alone the police have detained over 9,000 children for vagrancy, including 5,000 parentless and 1,500 homeless children, and 1,600 young beggars, says Bazhchivanzha. “Recently, together with officials from the Ministry of Children, Family and Youth and the Ministry of Education, we carried out an operation to locate homeless children in Kyiv. More than 60 were detained within 24 hours. A number of juveniles were found in nightclubs after midnight. Their parents were notified, and requests were forwarded to local authorities to rescind the licenses of 25 retail outlets selling alcohol to minors.

The following is an excerpt from a report filed by Tetiana Bukhtiarova, head of the interior ministry’s juvenile division in Dnipropetrovsk oblast: “In the course of Operation Street Children nine teenaged beggars were detained. They turned out to be from Donetsk, Kryvy Rih, Dnipropetrovsk raion, and Piatykhatka. Two of them were on wanted lists and were institutionalized; the rest were sent home or taken into the care of social services.”

Experts believe that children who beg are forced into this by their parents. Law enforcement statistics show that 20,000 parents have been prosecuted for parental misconduct; over 2,000 cases to annul parental rights are before the courts. Law enforcement agencies have 45,000 problem families with 90,000 children on record. Almost 40,000 juveniles become victims of crimes every day.

A woman was recently arrested in Cherkasy oblast after killing her daughter, who was only a few months old, while in a state of intoxication. Criminal proceedings are underway in this oblast against an AIDS-afflicted man, who raped his small daughter for two years, even though he knew he was sick. Another rapist father was arrested in Khmelnytsky oblast. In Luhansk oblast a woman was arrested on charges of forcing her son to commit robbery.

Kostiantyn Stohnii, head of the interior ministry’s Department for Public Liaison, says that since the beginning of 2007 a total of 7,200 juveniles have been arrested on criminal charges. On a positive note, the number of crimes committed by schoolchildren has dropped by nine percent. “Exploitation of child labor is another from of violence,” he says. “Nine child labor criminal cases have been opened in the first six months of this year. That’s not a big number, of course, but such cases are hard to detect because employers pass off under-age workers as their relatives. There are 6,000 militia officers monitoring children’s rights in summer work and recreation camps.” Law enforcement personnel say that the government should pay more attention to developing a network of boarding schools and children’s homes. There are many cases of children spending a night in the homes of police officers because there are not enough beds in social care institutions.

COMMENTARY

Oleksandr NAUMUK , deputy head of the Juvenile Service, Kyiv State City Administration:

“The number of homeless children has dropped in Kyiv lately, owing to the round-the-clock raids we carry out every day together with the militia. There are days when we don’t bring in a single minor. Two-thirds of homeless children come from the regions. They head for the capital because earning money is easier here. Such children were found at Sviatoshyno Bazaar and institutionalized. We appealed to Kyiv residents, asking them to notify us about beggars with children. After a series of arrests the number of cases of children forced to beg has decreased. Today the capital has no problem housing detained children; we have two children’s homes and a rehabilitation center. True, these children’s homes offer only three-month accommodations, but before long such institutions will be reorganized as social and psychological centers, where juveniles will be able to stay for up to nine months. After that children will be returned to their parents or institutionalized.”