Blind girl criticises Russia adoption ban
2013-01-14 17:56
Moscow - A blind Russian high-schooler's impassioned
criticism of the ban on adoption by Americans has added a new and compelling
voice to the chorus of condemnation of the law.
Since her 6 January blog entry complaining about the ban,
written as an open letter to President Vladimir Putin, Natasha Pisarenko has
attracted the wide attention of Russian media and, she fears, drawn the
disapproving notice of authorities.
The adoption ban, which went into effect 1 January, is
one of the most controversial moves of the first year of Putin's third term in
the Kremlin.
It was enacted as part of a bill retaliating for a new US
law that calls for sanctions against Russians deemed to be human rights
violators.
But critics say it punishes innocent children by denying
them a chance of escaping Russia's often-dismal orphanages.
Around 20 000 people held a protest march against the
measure in Moscow on Sunday that included banners likening Putin to King Herod,
whom the Bible says ordered the massacre of Jewish male infants.
Pisarenko wrote sarcastically that by signing the law,
Putin was "saving children from American evil" and said that Russians
rarely adopt disabled children because the country's medical system is backward
and can't take care of them.
"They die because Russia doesn't have modern
medicine," she wrote.
Pisarenko, blind from birth, writes that she has painful
personal experience with Russia's medical inadequacy.
She says that although her father detected her blindness
within days of her birth, Russian doctors were unable to diagnose it for months.
But, she says, she received precise diagnosis and the hope of treatment from
German and American doctors.
"For Russian doctors, I am a child with an illness
of unknown etiology ... but in Germany and America I am a patient whose sight
the doctors are trying to restore," she wrote.
Concluding her post, Pisarenko called on Putin to adopt
five or 10 children with serious congenital disorders.
Government’s reaction
Putin's spokesperson Dmitry Peskov was quoted by a local
radio station as saying "... Of course we will pay attention to such a
statement.
"This girl is well known to us, she's known by the
regional authorities and by the health ministry," he said.
Pisarenko and her parents have challenged authorities
before, according to Russian media, notably when her parents agitated to have
her educated at a regular school in her native Rostov-on-Don, rather than
sending her away to a school for the blind.
She's now in Grade 10, one year short of graduation under
the Russian system.
In a later post, she expressed worry that her letter would
cause her parents to be called in for questioning by regional authorities.
When AP on Monday
asked her father, Nikolai, if Natasha could be interviewed, he said he had been
ordered not to comment to news media, but declined to say who issued the order.
"Probably, I will regret that I wrote what I
think," Natasha wrote in her blog on Saturday.
- AP
