It was not to be for Russian boy reciting Hamlet

RUSSIA: The detention of a 10-year-old boy for reciting Hamlet in the street in Moscow has caused a public outcry.

Police have launched an internal investigation after officers seized the boy on Vozdvizhenka Street as he declaimed lines from the play. The children’s rights commissioner is also looking into the incident.

Video shot on a mobile phone shows the distressed boy screaming and crying: ‘‘Help me, help me!’’ as officers manhandled him towards a patrol car. His stepmother tried to intervene, asking the officers, ‘‘What the f... are you doing? Let the child go.’’

The boy was released after being taken to a police station. His father, Elias Skavronsky, a designer and composer, was charged with failing to fulfill his duties as a parent.

Police claimed that the boy was begging. Skavronsky denied that, saying that his son had a bag like a busker’s, which people could throw coins into if they chose.

He said that his son was training to act and that a speech therapist had recommended that he practised speaking publicly to overcome a problem with his diction. The boy’s stepmother was sitting 20 metres away reading a book when police detained him, Skavronsky added.

He claimed that officers had torn his wife’s clothes and smashed her tablet computer when she tried to prevent the boy’s arrest.

Footage of the incident on Friday evening has been viewed 2.6 million times and shared 33,000 times on Facebook, with many users expressing disgust at the behaviour of the police. The Times