Russian MPs split over fresh suggestion to ban foreign adoptions
Nationalist party LDPR wants to expand the adoptions ban on all countries that use sanctions against Russia, but United Russia party urges caution, saying such restrictions should only apply to countries that actually allow the mistreatment of kids.
State Duma MP Anton Khudyakov, who represents the Liberal-Democratic Party, said in an interview with popular daily Izvestia that he was preparing a bill that, once approved, would ban the adoptions of Russian orphans by citizens of all countries that had introduced sanctions against the Russian Federation.
“In Western countries children become victims of crimes on the hands of their adopters and besides, in Europe they promote values that lead to the extermination of mankind,” the politician told the newspaper. “Our children must not live in such conditions and this is why we are going to secure their future in Russia.”
Khudyakov suggested that the new bill expand adoption restrictions currently applied to the citizens and organizations from the United States to all countries of the European Union, Australia, Canada, Norway, Switzerland and Japan.
However, the deputy head of the State Duma Committee for Women, Family and Children, MP Olga Batalina (United Russia), says the LDPR’s initiative lacks grounds.
“When we are passing decisions on restrictions in the adoptions sphere we must think only about the interests of the children. The grounds can be violation of children’s rights, lack of security guarantees for adopted kids, poor control of state agencies and the imperfection of national laws,” ITAR-TASS quoted Batalina as saying.
She added that these were the factors that had been taken into consideration when Russia introduced the previous adoption bans.
The acts mentioned by Batalina are the so called Dima Yakovlev Law passed by the parliament in December 2012, that banned the adoption of Russian orphans by US citizens or by proxy of US organizations, and also the amendments introduced in 2013 that applied the same restrictions to countries allowing same-sex marriage.
In mid-2013 the Central Russian coal-mining territory of Kemerovo introduced a complete ban on adoptions of local children by foreigners, making their region the first subject of the Russian Federation to introduce such a radical measure.
Besides, Russian authorities are pushing through the rules that would only allow cross-border adoptions to countries that had signed bilateral agreements with Russia. So far, only France and Italy have entered such agreements and officials have earlier reported that Spain and the UK could follow suit in the near future.
