Hiding Behind Children

In an article for Yezhednevnyi Zhurnal, correspondent Alexander Ryklin describes his experiences while covering the visit of Garry Kasparov to the south of Russia last week. The FSB and "special forces" did everything in their power to obstruct Kasparov's visit – the chess-player turned politician was pelted with eggs, abused, and denied access to hotels and restaurants. As Ryklin points out, one of the most disturbing features of the organized hostility was that children as young as 10 or 11 were used for the purposes of obstruction [my tr.]:

At the moment of our arrival three dozen children were covering the area in front of the entrance to the Palace of Culture with chalk drawings. They were guarded by about a hundred policemen (most of whom were actually captains and majors) and also by some men in plain clothes. They may have been FSB officials, or they may just have been thugs. Songs in bravura style came from powerful loudspeakers. The people who had come to listen to Kasparov crowded on the edges of the cordon. At one moment one of the moms of the young artists, having apparently taken me for a "man in plain clothes", timidly asked if the children would have to stay out in the heat for much longer. "I mean, they’ve been drawing all morning, the poor things.” It need hardly be said how emotionally the situation was viewed by the members of the “Mothers of Beslan” Committee, who had come to Vladikavkaz to meet Kasparov. “They’ve used our children for cover again,” the women were saying. One of them was taken ill, and an ambulance had to be called. It was then that the incident with the eggs took place. And again children were used. They were brought in on a minibus…