IN LOVING MEMORY

Valentina G. Sisikin
1917- 1999

PREPARING A HOME FOR RUSSIA'S 500,000 HOMELESS CHILDREN

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Two million Russian children lack families, and almost two-thirds of those live in the street 650,000 of them live in orphanages. Some 100,000 more are placed there each year.
After leaving orphanages, half become criminals within 10 years. One in three become alcoholics and one in 10 commit suicide after a year.


200,000 DOOMED CHILDREN OF RUSSIA

"doomed to a life of deprivation and cruelty" is how the New York-based Human Rights Watch described conditions for many of the 200,000 children who live in Russian orphanages. It describes Russian state institutions as a "gula"' where children suffer "appalling levels of abuse and neglect." The Russian government has tried to hide the problem. One of those children Dima, still cannot tell his story with words. He draws the events of his short, tragic life using stick figures. His nightmare ended temporarily in October, when he and his sister, both undernourished and suffering from dysentery, were taken in by a shelter for abandoned and abused children in Tomilino, a suburb 10 miles east of Moscow.

Human Rights Watch found evidence of punishment similar to torture and brutal hazing by older children at state institutions, home to 200,000 Russian orphans and abandoned children. Some 30,000 children are summarily diagnosed as "invalids," "imbeciles," or worse, "idiots," deemed uneducatable. They are condemned to lives in dark isolation and never taught to walk or read, according to the report.




Kathleen Hunt, its author, recently told reporters that even abandoned children deemed ''normal'' by the state may be beaten, locked in freezing rooms, tied to furniture for days at a time, or sexually abused. The reaction of the Russian authorities to the critique of their orphanages has been to block access to the institutions; punish or threaten to fire workers if they speak about abuses; and, in some instances, pardon those who are responsible for the wrongdoing,'' the Human Rights Watch report said. The destructive legacy of such treatment is clear.




Of the 15,000 children who leave orphanages each year, one in three ends up homeless or unemployed, said Hunt. One in five commits a criminal offense. One in 10 commits suicide. The number of abandoned children in Russia is staggering and growing. The institutions are graveyards for hopeless children.

There are at least 70 times as many Russian teenagers infected with syphilis as there were in 1990. During this decade, the number of teens between the ages of 15 and 17 suffering from syphilis has increased by almost 70 fold, from 5.7 per 100,000 in 1990 to 389.9 in 1996. 1/3 of Russia's 1.5 million teachers took part in national protests in January, demanding wages from the past 12 months be paid. The average monthly wage of a Russian teacher, even when paid, is a near starvation-level 576 rubles (US$23).

Twenty-six people in Dagestan, including eight children, have been hospitalized there with confirmed typhoid. The source of the disease is sewage waters penetrating water-pipes

The Russian labor camp system, described by the UN as "hell on earth", (yes the gulags still exist) is now barely able to provide its one million official inhabitants (probably 3) with a proper diet or treat the tuberculosis from which many suffer. Food, vitamins and clothes are desperately needed for 80 young children and babies at a women's prison at Mozhaisk, 70 miles from Moscow. (yes babies born to inmates become permanent inmates themselves.). Wardens must do "fund-raising" to feed prisoners. The government does not.


Says Vladimir Litvinov, the head of the Ivanovo prison "Half the people in this prison are here for almost no reason at all. We are talking about people pinching cabbages or potatoes in rural areas where life is very poor indeed. They just shouldn't be here."

Nizhnii Tagil has the highest rate of lung and stomach cancer in Russia; the incidence of bronchial disease in children is twice the national average.

Children born in prison remain there for the duration of their mother's sentence.

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