Putin against Babies
By Israel Shamir
To the many crimes of President
Vladimir Putin, a new one was added last month: kicking
babies, sweet, innocent, plump babies -- out of sheer
wickedness. This crime was discussed ad nauseam, until
it became a meme which was
summed up by the NY Times’ own Thomas
Friedman: “When recently confronted with his regime’s
bad behavior, [Putin’s] first instinct was to block
American parents from adopting Russian orphans, even
though so many of them badly need homes.” Surprisingly,
in Russia the voices against the new ban are even more
shrill. At recent press conference, no less than eight
different Russian journalists badgered President Putin
on this one topic, each offering little more than loaded
insinuations disguised as questions. The “White”
opposition marched in force against the “Scoundrels” (as
they describe the supporters of the ban) and compared
Putin to King Herod.

Constantine Eggert, a leading anti-Putin
voice in the oligarch-owned Kommersant daily,
mixed Dickens treacle with rat poison to
bewail the misfortune of the Russian orphans who
have been deprived of their chance to grow strong and
healthy beneath the splendor of the Stars and Stripes:
“Perhaps because of the ban just one sweet kiddy will
never read Winnie the Pooh, will not blow out
candles on his birthday cake, will not proceed to school
and afterwards to a college accompanied by his
applauding new family in Texas or California… His fate
will forever darken the conscience of the Duma
(Parliament) Members and of the President who deprived
him of his chance”.
This was to be expected from Russian
mainstream media, as it is predominantly oligarch-owned
and pro-Western. But the great majority of ordinary
Russians (76%) support the new law banning Americans
from adopting Russian children, according to an
independent poll by the US-funded
WCIOM. The opposition Communist Party also voted for
the new law. The well-known liberal democrat and
feminist
Maria Arbatova, an ex-MP and writer, much involved
with orphanages and adoption, wondered aloud why the
opposition was so enraged by the ban, and suggested that
it was for tactical reasons: “They need fuel for their
protests. Pussy Riot is old hat; these orphans
are fresh fodder!” Radical poet, and leader of the
proscribed NBP party, Eduard Limonov also supported the
ban, and scoffed at the opposition for defending US
interests rather than Russian children.
It’s not that Russians have suddenly
discovered that adoption into the US is bad for
children. While the timing of the ban was admittedly
affected by politics, this ban had been impatiently
waiting in the wings for some time. Before considering
the grounds for such a pointed law, let us dispose of
this issue of timing. The ban is little more than a
rider to a much larger package crafted by the Duma with
the intention of signalling to America Russia’s
displeasure of something called the Magnitsky Act. The
Magnitsky Act is a particularly troublesome piece of
American legislature that allows the US to seize, freeze
and confiscate the assets of Russian citizens if their
names are placed on a secret list. The stated objective
behind this American law is to harass the people who may
have been responsible for the death of Russian lawyer
Sergey Magnitsky. Magnitsky, who had represented a US
fund, was arrested for alleged tax evasion and died in
jail under suspicious circumstances. The Duma did not
create retaliatory laws to protect a couple of prison
guards and an investigator or two who fall within the
stated objective. The issue is much larger: every
Russian citizen is under the power of this secret
Magnitsky panel and their secret Magnitsky list.
The defense of human rights has been
used as a pretext for sinister agendas by many
governments throughout history. The US is particularly
generous with their efforts to defend human rights
around the world, and the Magnitsky Act can be used to
arrest and rob any Russian, anywhere. Every Tom, Dick
and Harry, or rather Ivan, Sergey and Vladimir might be
declared an offender against the US concept of human
rights and lose his property, thanks to this US law. The
citizens of Russia have good reason to be concerned, as
they have legally invested at least 500 billion dollars
of their assets in Western banks. The West had strongly
encouraged this Russian transfer of wealth into Western
banks and properties, possibly as a way to control
Russian politics.
Zbigniew Brzezinski famously said:
“Since $500 billion owned by Russia’s so-called elite is
held in our banks, you should first understand whose
elite it is!” The US Magnitsky Act created the legal
machinery to seize the assets of Russia’s decision
makers without even the semblance of a legal or
democratic process. Just as the US President is
empowered to execute any person on the face of earth by
the power of his omnipresent drones, so may he add any
Russian name to the secret Magnitsky list.
Worried Russian leaders immediately
prepared a whole package of measures to counteract the
Magnitsky Act. They created their own verision of the
Magnitsky Act, which forbids entry to and allows the
state to seize the assets of any American offender of
human rights. Such a law could be used against the
American DEA agents who took custody of
Viktor Bout, or against the American policemen who
mistreated the Occupy demonstrators, or even against the
American officals who enforce the Magnitsky Act. This
law, however, was a paper tiger. US-Russia relations are
far from symmetrical, and very few Americans own any
assets in Russia or even visit Russia.
So the Russians added some teeth to
their anti-Magnitsky package: they took steps to
reign-in US-supported NGOs, and notably they forbade
American citizens to lead or be members of Russian NGOs
that have political agendas. Support for this reform
measure had already been building for years: Russia –
like most countries – dislikes the openly political
meddlings of these US State Department-financed NGOs and
considers them a source of foreign intrigue. Some time
ago the Russian legislature demanded that the leaders of
foreign NGOs register as foreign agents (as is done in
the US), but unfortunately this law has been totally
ignored by the NGOs, and the Russian Department of
Justice preferred to look other way.
Looking for an additional way to
express their displeasure with the Magnitsky Act,
Russian politicians co-opted a
rider - a proposition long lobbied-for by
veteran Duma Member Katherine Lakhova, professional
pediatrician and head of the Duma’s Women, Children and
Family Committee. Mrs Lakhova had for years fought her
lonely crusade against foreign adoptions, with very
little result, until last December when her addendum was
abruptly adopted by the Duma.
Foreign adoption in Russia is a leftover from Yeltsin’s
era. In Soviet days, orphans were taken care by the
state system; there was simply no question of passing
them abroad. In fact, it was much more common for
foreign children to be brought into Russia, for example
the “Spanish Kids”, the orphaned children of Spanish
anti-fascist fighters killed by Franco in the 1930’s. In
the 1990’s, after the collapse of the USSR, with
millions out of work and others busy stripping and
selling whatever could be sold for cash, some clever
entrepreneurs discovered an as-yet-untapped resource:
children. There is a strong and growing demand for
children by childless couples, by gay and single
citizens – and, sad to say, by the ever-present
pedophile rings and the burgeoning transplant industry.
The market was willing to pay over $100,000 per child –
a fortune in Yeltsin’s Russia. Officials were corrupted,
doctors issued false certificates, and Russian children
were trafficked abroad.
One case to consider was that of Masha Allen, or the
“DisneyWorld Girl”, as she was called by the US media.
She was five years old in 1998 when she was shipped from
her native Russia to come live with
41-year-old Matthew Mancuso, a single American
millionaire and a rabid pedophile. “He legally adopted
her from a Russian orphanage and brought her to his home
in the small western Pennsylvania hamlet of Plum. Over
the next five years, Mancuso sexually abused and
exploited Masha, videotaping and photographing her in
various stages of abuse, and posting the images on the
Internet to share with others members of an online
community of paedophiles and child pornography fans” –
wrote
Julian Assange about the case. She was rescued in
2003 by the FBI, and her abuser languishes in jail. The
case became notorious, however, because the people
responsible for allowing such an adoption to happen – in
Russia and in the US - were never prosecuted or
punished.
The recent and traumatic case of Dima
Yakovlev, whose American adopted name was Chase
Harrison, provided the name for Mme Lakhova’s rider; in
fact, the whole package has become known as Dima’s Law.
Dima Yakovlev died of heatstroke after his adoptive
father left him in a parked car for nine hours. Gene
Weingarten received a Pulitzer Prize for his
story on the case. Russians are particularly
horrified that the negligent father remains unpunished
by US courts. The tragedy began in Russia when little
Dima was forcibly separated from his grandmother and
sister by bribed officials, and his health certificate
faked.
Both Maria Arbatova and Catherine
Lakhova cite many similar, dreadful cases: children
exported for the organ trade; children who vanished
after being adopted by bogus parents; children adopted
to be re-adopted; children dropped off at airports with
one-way tickets back to Russia. These two women with
very different world-views agree: adoptions abroad must
be stopped. Unfortunately the adoption industry takes in
some fifty million dollars every year, and this profit
is currently shared between more than 80 US adoption
agencies acting in Russia; such a lucrative business
cannot be stamped out overnight. Before the new law,
Lakhova was a lonely voice in the wilderness standing up
against the political clout of the international
adoption agencies, against the kind of leverage that can
only be purchased by multi-million dollar profits. While
both Arbatova and Lakhova are pleased that adoption to
the US have stopped thanks to Dima’s Law, they will not
be satisfied until there is an end to all overseas
adoptions.
There are plenty of non-political
reasons to single out the US: Americans have snapped up
one third of all foreign adoptions; the US has never
ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child;
US authorities continue to refuse to allow Russian
consular workers to meet with adopted children; the US
allows people who are not allowed to adopt American
children to adopt foreign children; the US permits the
re-adoption of and free transfer of adopted children.
While America may have been the first to be struck off
the list, it will not be the last. Other countries also
play fast and loose with the laws set down by the Duma.
I know personally of Russian children adopted by
Israelis; against explicit rules they were converted
into the Jewish faith and made to forget their original
homeland, language and Christianity.
The vocal opponents of the new
Russian law claim that the Americans are only adopting
the handicapped children that Russians have refused to
adopt. This sounds good on paper, but the definition of
what constitutes a handicap becomes confusing when so
much money is at stake. The Russian officials, social
workers, orphanage managers, and doctors who cooperate
to produce the necessary documents to turn a healthy
child into a handicapped one are merely pawns in a
larger game. Out of a thousand of Russian children
adopted into the US last year, less than fifty were
officially declared handicapped; furthermore, a recent
inspection proved that almost all of them were right as
a whistle from the start, and that in most cases the
verdict of handicapped was given in exchange for a
bribe. Impossible as it may seem, some foreign adopters
have seemingly conquered the famed Russian bureaucracy,
succeeding in extracting a child in one single day. It
takes weeks for a Russian to adopt a Russian child, even
under the best of circumstances.
In the wake of the ban, many cases
were checked and many violations were uncovered. The
previous Russian adoption law allowed children to be
adopted abroad only if there were no waiting Russian
adopters. To get around this law, the corrupt Russian
officials simply scared off the Russian adopters,
claiming that the child carried AIDS or other incurable
disease. These corrupt officials did not scruple to
separate a sister from her brother, sending them off to
different countries. In short, the new law exposed
terrible breaches of the existing law.
Adoptions that occur within the
boundaries and laws of one country are more than
difficult enough to evaluate and judge. If a couple (or
a single person, or a homosexual couple) has no
children, perhaps they are not meant to. People do not
have a right to have children: this is a privilege
granted by the Almighty. Children do have a natural
right to natural parents, and this right is today being
infringed by moneyed folk who hire wombs-for-rent or buy
babies. Cross-border adoptions are even more
troublesome, because then the child can be deprived of
his relations, language and faith.
Perhaps in an ideal world,
cross-border adoptions would be permitted in certain
carefully considered cases. But the real world manifests
the unequal footing of international relations: poor
people in poor countries are coerced into giving their
children to wealthy people in wealthy countries. There
may be Americans who come to Russia or Malawi in search
of children, but there are no American children flown to
Russia or Malawi to be adopted. Swedes import children
from Korea, but no Korean has yet been given a Swedish
child into his custody. Although every adoptive parent
always claims to have the best interest of the child at
heart, they are in fact robbing an economically weak
country of its most precious asset – its future
generation.
For Russia, this law should have come
much earlier: after all, Russia is now a very rich and
prosperous country. Moscow is as chic as Paris, and much
more expensive. Average incomes in Russia are on the
level with other developed countries. America take note:
the Yeltsin era is gone. Russia is not a colony anymore.
The legal detritus from the quasi-colonial Nineties is
being cleared away. The business of overseas adoption
is much too close to the crime of child trafficking, and
the boundaries between good deed and crime become
blurred by legal documents, medical terminology and cold
hard cash. The crime of child trafficking is far worse
than the potential good (in an ideal world) of overseas
adoption. If the would-be adopters truly care about
children, the US is not short of orphans, deserted
children, hungry children. Let the Americans take care
of them, and let the Russian kids grow up in Russia as
happily as they can.
Language edited by Paul Bennett
Israel Shamir reports from Moscow. He
can be contacted at
adam@israelshamir.net