Children’s rights ombudsman says Opponents of U.S. adoption ban want to continue selling Russian orphans

(Interfax – January 15, 2013)

The impossibility to continue funding pseudo-human rights organizations was the true reason behind last weekend’s protests against the so-called Dima Yakovlev law in Russia, the country’s ombudsman for children’s rights Pavel Astakhov said.

“The protests are not  not against the fact that they [orphans] are allegedly doomed to some sort of existence or even death here,” he said during a trip to Kemedovo on Tuesday. “These protests are against the impossibility of funding these pseudo-human rights organizations at someone else’s expense. All foreign foundations, all foreign agencies have closed their accounts.”

“This resistance has emerged among those who do not want to tackle these problems, but want to see humiliated Russia and want us to continue selling our children,” he said.

As many as 105,000 children live in orphanages in Russia today, which is “an unacceptably large number,” Astakhov said.

There are 1,000 legally capable people per each such child, the official said, calling on Russian families to adopt orphans.

“As we play this “American roulette”, we do not know what will happen to this child, even it is a child with disabilities – whether they will become another Jessica Long, a Paralymic champion, or another Ksenia Antolova from Kemerovo, who was abused by her adoptive American father,” Astakhov said.