By Robin Munro - The Moscow Times
March 15, 2002.
"The babies were among five newborns who were found dead in the first two weeks of March.
"
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The bodies of two newborn
babies were found this week in Moscow, the latest of 10
babies who apparently have been killed by their mothers
in the city since the beginning of the year, Interfax
reported Thursday, citing the police.
The body of one baby,
believed to be 5 or 6 days old, was found Wednesday in
the Moscow River near Lyotnaya Ulitsa in the northwest
of the city. Around its neck was an object that appeared
to have been used to strangle the baby, the report said.
The baby had been dead for four to six days.
The second dead baby was
discovered by the landlord of an apartment on
Yuzhnobutovskaya Ulitsa in the south of the city, also
on Wednesday. It showed no signs of violence and had
apparently been abandoned by the tenants, the report
said.
The babies were among five
newborns who were found dead in the first two weeks of
March, Interfax said.
Moscow police were
investigating the deaths, according to the report, but
when reached by telephone, police said they could
provide no information Thursday.
Although it was not clear how
many newborn babies are killed each year in Moscow on
average, the deaths of 10 in 2 1/2 months can only be
alarming.
In all of Russia, police
investigate the murders of up to 200 newborns each year,
according to a paper written by Farit Safuanov, a senior
researcher at the Serbsky Institute of forensic
psychiatry.
Boris Altshuler, head of the
children's rights organization the Right of the Child,
said those most likely to give birth to unwanted babies
are teenage mothers and the thousands of women who
travel to Moscow from throughout the former Soviet Union
to earn a living.
Many women come from Moldova
and Ukraine to work in the city's markets. "They are
very dependent on their chief who runs the market and
they also often have sexual relations with him and in
many cases they become pregnant," Altshuler said by
telephone. "For whatever reasons giving birth to a baby
creates an enormous problem -- they really cannot cope
with it."
For many women in Russia, the
solution to an unwanted pregnancy is abortion. The
Academy of Sciences estimates only one pregnancy in
three is carried to full term.
But impoverished women from
other former Soviet republics, who are not registered in
Moscow, are unlikely to get an abortion, Altshuler
said.
"Even if it costs only 1,000
rubles they won't do it. They don't have the money," he
said. "It's a crime that there is no place in Moscow
where you can go anonymously and get a free
abortion.
"If they can't do this, then
no one should be surprised that babies are found in the
water" he said.
Some women try to abort an
unwanted child themselves. "It's really harmful for the
child -- they try to kill him -- and in many cases if
the child survives, it is born handicapped," he
said.
If a woman without
registration gives birth to an unwanted child in a
maternity hospital, she is likely to abandon the baby
there, Altshuler said. It is the unwanted babies born
outside a hospital who are at risk of
infanticide.
Marina Levina, president of
Parents' Bridge, a St. Petersburg organization that
works with homeless children, said the problems are
similar in the northern capital. Many of women with
unwanted pregnancies have no registration and thus are
not entitled to free medical care.
Last year, working under a
European Union Tacis program, Parents' Bridge surveyed
maternity hospitals that accept mothers without
registration as well as mothers who use alcohol and
drugs and those who are psychologically ill.
"From January to May in just
one such hospital, 16 babies were abandoned by their
mothers," Levina said Thursday by telephone.
"The staff said that women
who take drugs are those that abandon their children,"
she said. "These children are very hard to care for and
cannot just be put in an orphanage -- they need
individual care. If they don't get it they
die."
Levina said poverty was
certainly a factor behind infanticide, but she blamed
cultural attitudes.
"History has taught our
citizens to value neither their own lives nor that of
others," she said. "Women who live in this country also
think that the life of a child is worth as little as
their own lives."
The punishment for a mother
convicted of infanticide is a sentence of up to five
years in jail.
"This is murder and any
murder must be punished," Altshuler said. "If a baby is
found dead in an apartment where the mother left him to
die then it is also murder. But we must also find a way
to punish authorities who failed to create the
conditions to support women who are in this
situation."
Altshuler said Right of the
Child had sent a list of proposals to improve the lot of
newborn babies to President Vladimir Putin on March 7,
when the president met with the nation's leading
women.
"I hope he will read it and
that something will follow," he said.
On Thursday, the government
instructed the Labor Ministry to develop a federal
program called "The Children of Russia" for 2003-06. The
program is to include sections on disabled children, the
prevention of neglect and crime among minors, the
healthy child, gifted children and orphans, Interfax
reported.