23.04.2017, Russia.
At the Third Congress of the All-Russian Parents’ Resistance organization (Russian: RVS), the chairwoman of this organization, Maria Mamikonyan, spoke about the practice of the abduction children from families by child protective services, on April 15, as reported by the correspondent of the Rossa Primavera News Agency.
RVS chairwoman’s speech also acted as the presentation of the RVS’ report to the Russian president about the practice of abducting children from families in Russia. As the RVS uncovered, the abduction of children often happens in public places, schools, hospitals, without warning the parents. As a result, the family is faced with an accomplished fact, “the child has been taken away by an inter-departmental commission,” the RVS chairman said.
Another reason for seizing children is for supposedly being unsupervised. Quite commonly, the seizure occurs simply because the child was not accompanied by legal representatives, which are his parents. That is, if the child was not with his parents, but with other adults, for instance, his grandmother, then this could be the reason for considering this as a case of “being unsupervised”, with the child being subsequently seized. For officials, it has become the norm that the child should always be accompanied by legal representatives, and the grandmother is considered to be nobody for the child, Maria Mamikonyan said.
The RVS leader said that Children’s service are quite confident that “porridge is not a food”, and they can take children from their family because of an insufficient assortment of food in the refrigerator. She also added that the absence of a separate bed for a child in a large family became another reason for seizure. According to the law, local authorities must allocate adequate housing to large families; but instead, the officials decided to take the children away.
The Third Congress of the All-Russian Parents’ Resistance organization took place on April 15 in Moscow. More than 1300 participants and delegates of the RVS from 64 Russian regions took part in the event. Among the congress’ guests were Duma members, senators, representatives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, social and religious organizations, Children’s Ombudsmen, experts, journalists from federal and regional media.
In January 2017, Russian President Vladimir Putin assigned the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection, the Civic Chamber of Russia and the Children’s Ombudsman to analyze the practice of seizing children from their families from the standpoint of excessive force, and of illegal interference into family affairs. The All-Russian Parents’ Resistance organization’s alternative report to the president was presented on April 15, from the podium of The Third Congress of the parents’ organization.
Source: Rossa Primavera News Agency
