MOSCOW, November 6. /TASS/. The problem of taking away children from a Russian citizen living in Norway should be solved together with the country’s social services, Russian children’s rights commissioner Pavel Astakhov said on Thursday.
Addressing the Russian Mothers public movement, Russian citizen Andrey Prikazchikov said the Norwegian authorities had taken away his two little sons and threatened to take the third child.
In 2002 Prikazchikov got married to a Norwegian citizen. Three sons were born. During a college football game, one of the Norwegian boys received injuries by one of Prikazchikov’s sons. The college’s administration filed a complaint to the Norway child welfare service, called Barnevarne. Several time later the parents received a letter saying they failed to bring up their children. The sons were taken away just from the college, brought to police and sent to different “patronage families”.
Astakhov said, “Today any active measures by the Norwegian services to take away children from Russian and Russian-language families are aimed at solving the problem at the political level: the children’s rights commissioner and the Foreign Ministry interfere. That must not be.”
“These issues are solved in other aspects — within the social work,” he said.
“Norway has the Constitution, which envisions the fact that every family has right to the family’s secret and personal life. In addition, there is the Convention on the Rights of the Child that says the child cannot be uprooted from the father and mother even when parents commit a crime. They are considered not guilty till the court passes a verdict,” Astakhov said.