MOSCOW: Russia’s lower house of parliament gave key support yesterday to a bill banning adoptions by Americans, in a retaliatory move against US rights legislation that has strained relations between the two sides.
The so-called Dima Yakovlev bill was drafted after US lawmakers last week adopted the Magnitsky Act — legislation targeting Russians allegedly involved in the 2009 prison death of anti-corruption whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky.
The Russian legislation is expected to be approved in a final reading by the State Duma tomorrow, followed by the upper house of parliament.
It will then need to be signed by President Vladimir Putin before entering into force, possibly as early as the start of next year.
The surprise addition of an adoptions ban to a retaliatory Russian bill that until then had only blacklisted US officials for alleged rights abuses of their own sparked criticism from top ministers, including Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
Police officers put the parliament building under virtual lockdown before the reading, bringing reinforcements in anticipation of a large rally after an outrcy in the media and on opposition blogs about the legislation.
The Russian bill was named after a toddler who died of heat stroke in 2008 after his adoptive American father forgot him in a car in the summer months. The father was acquitted of manslaughter by a US court in the state of Virginia the same year, sparking indignation among Russian officials.
The Russian measure bans the adoption of Russian children by US families, ends the adoption agreement between the two countries, and forbids US adoption agencies from working in Russia.
The bill also blacklists foreigners implicated in human rights violations against Russians abroad, punishing them with entry bans, seizing of their assets and banning work of any businesses they might own.
While Putin last week welcomed parliament’s decision to retaliate against the Magnitsky Act, the Kremlin was more ambiguous about the adoption legislation.
When asked in a televised interview yesterday about the adoption ban, Putin’s spokesman Sergei Peskov said that Putin views the parliament’s position “with understanding” but added that “the line of the executive branch of the government is more restrained” than that of the pro-Kremlin lawmakers. Last week, Putin said that Russia’s reaction to the Magnitsky Act should be “adequate but not excessive.”
Unusually, the bill was publicly opposed by several political heavyweights, including Lavrov and Education Minister Dmitry Livanov, who said that its “eye-for-an-eye logic” will put at risk children who do not find adoptive parents in Russia. “There is a need to react firmly to any atrocities in relation to Russian boys and girls, but banning adoption as an institution is wrong, I believe,” Lavrov said in a statement.
Defending the bill, Olga Batalina, a deputy with the ruling United Russia party, said: “It is rather immoral to shift responsibility for Russian children on to nationals of other countries.”
Experts in the field however said that Americans usually adopt orphans who have already been rejected by Russian nationals, making it unlikely for these children to ever find a family after the bill is adopted.
“Americans cannot pick children, they can only adopt ones that have been refused in Russia,” said Yekaterina Smyslova, Russian coordinator for US agency International Christian Adoptions.
Americans often adopt children with disabilities and prenatal HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, she said, adding that post-adoption oversight is much stricter for international than domestic cases.
She said her agency has already faced a backlash, with judges in some Russian regions always turning down adoption requests by American families.
Of the 3,400 Russian children adopted by foreign families in 2011, 956 -- nearly a third — were adopted by US parents, according to official figures. Eighty nine of those adopted by US parents were disabled children.
Although Russian adoptions have declined over the past five years due to increased regulations, Russia is still the third largest source of adoptions for the United States, after China and Ethiopia.
Russian activists picketed the Duma ahead of the vote, some holding banners that read: “Deputies, you are worse than terrorists.” Officers detained around 30 protesters, a police spokesman said.
In its current form, the Russian bill also prevents US-financed non-government organisations from operating in Russia. Putin said in his state-of-the-nation address earlier this month that people who received foreign funding could not be politicians in Russia.
Magnitsky, 37, was a lawyer working for a Western firm who died in a pre-trial jail in Moscow in 2009 after claiming to have discovered a multi-million dollar tax fraud covered up by government officials.
He died after almost a year under pre-trial arrest that his mother said had exposed him to “torture conditions” and which his employer called retribution for his testimony against interior ministry officers.
AFP
