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Read, Debate: Engage.
| topic: | Rule of Law |
|---|---|
| located: | Russia |
| editor: | Igor Serebryany |
Russian lawmakers had to withdraw a bill about the establishment of juvenile courts just a few hours before it was due to be discussed in parliament, the first step to making a document a law.
The bill, dubbed 'Bill 2K; (after the first letters of its authors' surnames) was called off after a member of State Duma Pavel Krasheninnikov and a senator, Andrei Klishas, received an avalanche of protesting emails and comments on social media. "They simply didn't anticipate such a massive negative response, so they made an absolutely right decision to retreat," an MP from the ruling United Russia party Vyacheslav Lysakov said.
The two lawmakers made a decision "to retreat" despite the Duma's Committee on State Building supported the bill on Friday. As soon as the news broke in, Russian parental organisations launched a spontaneous still large-scale campaign online calling the planned law "a terrorist act against families." Over the weekend, parents collected over 120,000 signatures under hundreds of various petitions demanding to stop "juvenile terror."
Society's strong consensus over the controversial bill resulted in all four parliamentary parties withdrawing their initial support of the document on Monday, thus making it senseless for discussion during the Duma panel session.
The Duma's leaders immediately made a U-turn, with its deputy speaker Petr Tolstoi saying that the lawmakers were never going to "accept Western ill practice like that."
The "Western ill practice" adopted in the Bill 2K suggested that children could be taken from their parents by newly established courts which would be given authority to make decisions behind closed doors just 24-hours after receiving material. The bill envisaged the courts would consider such cases without the participation of the parents who will also have no option to appeal the ruling.
Parents were panicking after finding out that the list of reasons they could be stripped off of their parental rights was extremely voluminous, leaving no mother or father guarantee that their children are not the subject of "rescuing" by the courts.
Experts point out that the Bill 2K contradicted the Constitution which guarantees protection of the citizens' rights and freedoms as well as declared family a "traditional value" of the Russian society. The bill also contradicted the Russian Civil Code, Family Code and other existing laws and regulations. The most damaging shortcoming of the bill was that it destroyed the presumption of innocence, proposing the removal of the child even if his or her parents didn't pose any threat to the child's safety.
Though the bill's authors described it as a tool to "strengthen the family institution," it actually undermined it, an expert in the "Parental Committee" NGO Yuri Vlaskin says.
"This document demonstrates how our authorities misrepresent the concepts, changing their meaning to the opposite. Two "Ks" declare themselves patriots and supporters of the strong state. In reality, most of the laws the lawmakers pass destroy Russian traditional values and harm the society," he is convinced.
Despite the fact that the defenders of "traditional values" won this time around, they shouldn't feel too comfortable, Vlaskin warns.
"Authorities in Russia got accustomed for decades that their proposals are always supported by the population and so they take public indifference for granted. This is why today's massive opposition to that particular bill created immediate confusion within the parliament. But this is only a momentary weakness. We are nearly convinced that after a certain pause the bill will be reintroduced to the Duma," he says.
Head of the State Duma's Anti-juvenal Public Council, Nikolai Mishustin, notes that Russian lawmakers have been attempting to introduce juvenile technologies for many years, by hook or by crook. Mishustin, who is the father of six children, says the committee he chairs held over 20 discussions in the last ten years, for the number of attempts to introduce the bills similar to the Bill 2K.
"All those bills were aimed at putting a family's natural function of raising children under strict governmental control. They declare children's rights priority to the parents' rights, thus rendering a family an institution that restricts children's freedoms by definition because parents can exercise authority over their kids. This is a perverted logic, declaring parental duties an attempt to restrict children's rights", he says.
Besides abstract ideology, the proponents of juvenal courts bear practical economic interests, Mishustin adds.
"In Moscow alone, over 500 foster families have been waiting to adopt an orphan. The adoptive family receives a monthly allowance of 40,000 rubles (the size of a median salary in Moscow), alimonies from biological parents and a possibility to claim their apartment. An orphanage receives budget transfers of one million rubles. So the child-removing machine has been well-oiled. Nine out of ten children removed from their biological families end up in foster families," he says.
Even more sinister is that the government employees, such as school teachers, encourage children to report on their parents.
"They teach children that if they fall out with their parents, they should tell that to teachers or dial a special phone number. That becomes a tool for teenagers to blackmail their parents. And the system returns like a boomerang to the children who are unable to foresee the consequences of their complaints," Mishustin laments.
For example, in 2012, a 15-year-old girl committed suicide in Arkhangelsk – she was removed from her family by a social service after she had reported that her parents "restricted her freedom." In 2015, another 15-year-old girl jumped from the highrise building in Moscow when social workers arrived to take her to custody – again shortly after she had called to the crisis line. In 2018 in Rostov, a 13-year-old boy killed himself when social workers arrived at his school to bring him to foster parents.
Image by StockSnap
