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21 June 2015
Jan Simonsen:
Shame on Norway
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The
original version of this article in Norwegian was published
under the title
Skam over Norge on
Frie Ytringer, Jan Simonsens
blogg, on 21 June 2015.
This English version is published with the kind consent of
the author.
Translation:
Marianne Haslev Skånland
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"Shame
on Norway" was the cry from 500 demonstrators outside the
Norwegian embassy in Prague recently. The case of a Czech
mother in a Norwegian child protection case has been
prominent in Czech media for months, has been taken up in
the Czech parliament and led to debate about Norwegian
child protection in the Council of Europe and in the
European Parliament. So, what is the reaction of the
Norwegian government Minister of Children, Solveig Horne:
In a reply to district university lecturer Jan Storø in the
newspaper Aftenposten, she complains that Norway is
misunderstood abroad. But are we misunderstood?
"Norwegian authorities have on several occasions cooperated
with foreign media in order to give information about
Norwegian child protection. We refute groundless
allegations, but the effect of this is limited. It has
happened that interviews are crosscut and convey the wrong
impression", whimpers Solveig Horne – instead of dealing
with a few misunderstandings in the media and a pointed
statement from the Czech president, and then actually
thinking through whether elements in the criticism might be
right.
Is it really taken out of the blue when a nation of
culture, one of the most humane nations in Europe,
criticises Norway for violations of human rights and
brutality against children and their families, when the
child protection service (CPS) with poor justification
takes children away from their biological parents?
I have followed the debate in the Czech Republic via Czech
friends, through acting as advisor for Czech media, and
having myself been interviewed about Norwegian child
protection several times by Czech tv. The Czechs have been
extremely upset at the way a mother does not get her
children back, children who were taken from her and their
father on the basis of allegations against the father,
children who are not returned although the suspicion
against the father has been dispelled and the mother has,
to be on the absolutely safe side, even divorced him. It
particularly offends the Czechs that the sons have been
placed in two different families, that the mother is only
allowed to see them a couple of times a year, and not least
that she is forbidden to speak their mother tongue, Czech,
with her own Czech children.
The case has resulted in Czech politicians discovering that
Norway is maybe not after all the humanistic, model society
they had thought, and has led both politicians and the
media to investigate how Norwegian child protection works.
The issue has been raised from the single case up to a
general level and into a European debate concerning human
rights. In this debate Norway stands accused.
I can assure Solveig Horne that the criticism, minus a few
peripheral overstatements – and nothing but these
overstatements has been taken up by the Norwegian press –,
has been exceptionally unbiased and matter-of-fact. There
is no need for our Foreign Ministry to explain away
anything. What is needed is for Norwegians to understand
that the alarm which our system meets with internationally
is justified, and the system should be changed. As minister
for children, Solveig Horne has this task on her table.
The criticism voiced in the Czech Republic against
Norwegian CPS is near identical to the criticism which
earlier, all through the 1990s, came from the great
humanistic parliamentary politician of Fremskrittspartiet
(The Progress Party), John Alvheim. His heart bled for the
weak and vulnerable and he fought against injustice. He
wanted to strengthen and protect families, instead of
tearing them apart by depriving children of their parents
just because the CPS – often with incredible arguments –
held parents with few resources to "lack in ability to
care". In such cases, society should take action with real
help, not with destructive "transfers of care". Taking the
children away from their parents must be limited to cases
in which no real help is possible and where very serious
failure to care has taken place.
If Solveig Horne – contrary to what John Alvheim did –
chooses to defend the system instead of taking the
international criticism seriously and changing the system,
then she
is the one who
fails in care, fails families with few resources,
both
the parents
and
their children, who
need her helping hand and not her wrath.
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