{"id":3503,"date":"2018-05-13T07:32:15","date_gmt":"2018-05-13T06:32:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/?p=3503"},"modified":"2025-06-04T07:36:19","modified_gmt":"2025-06-04T06:36:19","slug":"when-a-norwegian-woman-asks-for-asylum-in-poland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/2018\/05\/13\/when-a-norwegian-woman-asks-for-asylum-in-poland\/","title":{"rendered":"When a Norwegian woman asks for Asylum in Poland"},"content":{"rendered":"

Poland \u2013 Today in Europe, freedom is in the East, as the Norwegian Silje Garmo did prove it by seeking asylum in Poland.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Will Poland grant asylum to the\u00a0Norwegian Silje Garmo<\/u>\u00a0and her 16 months old daughter Eira who flee the social services of their country? The Minister of Foreign Affairs Jacek Czaputowicz has got on his desk for already some months a favourable opinion from the Polish Immigration Office about the application for asylum of the Norwegian woman. After investigation and examination of the file, the Immigration Office has confirmed that the fundamental rights of Mrs. Garmo were threatened in Norway, as well as her elder daughter Fr\u00f8ya\u2019s, almost 13 years old nowadays, who was already taken away from her without respecting her rights to a fair defense and insofar the Norwegian Child Welfare Services (Barnevernet<\/em>) seeks to take away her younger daughter from her without any legitimate reason. However, for getting asylum in Poland, the favourable opinion of the Immigration Office is not sufficient and it is the Minister of Foreign Affairs \u2013 thus the government \u2013 who decides as a last resort. The decision of Mr. Czaputowicz might have fallen in February, but the Norwegian mother who seek refuge with her second child near Warsaw was informed of an extension of the deadline until the mid of April and then the end of May. However, the reputation of\u00a0Barnevernet<\/em>\u00a0is not to be done any more in Poland as well as in the other former Eastern countries that have a diaspora in the rich Scandinavian oil monarchy. Does the government of Mateusz Morawiecki fear that granting asylum to Norwegian citizens who deserve it might have an impact on the\u00a0future supply of Norwegian gas for Poland? On the other hand, the case of this Norwegian and the practices of\u00a0Barnevernet<\/em>\u00a0are very publicised in Poland and exposing Silje Garmo to be deported and separated from her daughter by the Norwegian authorities while the Polish paediatricians and psychiatrists did confirm that there were no reason to take away her child from this mother, might have disastrous consequences for the image of PiS with its voters who usually attach great importance to the rights of families.<\/p>\n

On 11 May, a deputy of PiS prepared an parliamentary interpellation for asking officially the minister why he does delay so long for granting asylum to Mrs. Garmo and her daughter. Besides the open support of several Polish parliamentarians, Mrs. Garmo can count on the assistance of the pro life and pro family lawyers\u2019 and legal experts\u2019 organisation Ordo Iuris\u00a0that helpt her to lodge her application for asylum<\/u>. Ordo Iuris already defended since years Polish families that were victims of the abusive practices of\u00a0Barnevernet<\/em>\u00a0in Norway and the lawyers of the NGO are preparing today other applications for asylum by Norwegian families who seek refuge in Poland.<\/p>\n

Silje Garmo has also got the support of the Czech MEP Tom\u00e1\u0161 Zdechovsk\u00fd who wrote to the Polish minister. Tom\u00e1\u0161 Zdechovsk\u00fd is paying close attention to the practices of\u00a0Barnevernet<\/em>\u00a0since he defended his compatriot Eva Michal\u00e1kov\u00e1. Both children of the Michal\u00e1ks were taken away from them by the Norwegian Child Welfare Services in 2011 and placed in two different foster families. Until today, Mrs. Michal\u00e1kov\u00e1 was not able to get her children back, though the Norwegian courts have not confirmed the suspicions of sexual violence that were at the origin of the kidnaping of the children by\u00a0Barnevernet<\/em>. The case even caused diplomatic\u00a0tensions between Norway and Czechia. In the same way, the unlikely recovery of a 9 years old Polish girl placed by force into Norwegian foster families by the Polish private detective Krzysztof Rutkowski and her exfiltration to Poland with the help of the Polish consul caused a diplomatic incident between Oslo and Warsaw in 2011. Norway tried to get the girl to be sent back by force but the Polish justice did refuse to bow to the Norwegian demand in the best interests of the child. Even today, the consul of Poland in Norway regularly helps to the evacuation in urgency to Poland of Polish families unfairly threatened by\u00a0Barnevernet<\/em>. The same Rutkowski and his team\u00a0have also organised<\/u>\u00a0the recovery of a boy born in Russia that had first tried to get help from the Russian authorities by email (to which he was forbidden to have an access).<\/p>\n

Another case that caused a good deal of commotion was the kidnapping in 2015 by\u00a0Barnevernet<\/em>\u00a0of the five children of a Pentecostal Romanian-Norwegian family, the Bodnariu\u2019s,\u00a0because of \u201cChristian radicalisation and indoctrination\u201d<\/u>\u00a0according to the reasons told to the family (as the family told), and officially because of claims of \u00ab\u00a0corporal punishments\u00a0\u00bb (in Norway, even spanking a child or giving him a slap on the hand are forbidden practices). This time, this is with Romania that Norway found itself in a delicate situation, and this case has furthermore lead to a wave of demonstrations in front of the Norwegian embassies over the world. The Bodnariu\u2019s have got more chance than the Michal\u00e1ks: in their case, the Norwegian authorities have finally bowed to the international pressure and have given back the children to their parents. For the young Michal\u00e1ks aged today of 8 and 13 years, the contacts with the mother are still extremely limited and supervised, and even the Czech grand-father of both children did not get the right to see them before he died in last September. In other cases,\u00a0Barnevernet<\/em>\u00a0has affected the relations between Norway and other countries like Lithuania, India or Russia. Eight cases concerning abuses by the Norwegian Child Welfare Services are currently challenged at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg and may lead to condemnations of Norway for its interferences to the right to respect one\u2019s private and family life.<\/p>\n

The specificity of Silje Garmo ist that she is Norwegian and that she fled her country taking with her, then accumulating, with the help of the Polish organisation Ordo Iuris, a certain number of evidences of illegal and abusive practices of\u00a0Barnevernet<\/em>, which maybe explains the\u00a0particular fierceness\u00a0of the Norwegian authorities to prosecute her. If she obtains asylum in Poland, it will be the first time since the Second World War that a citizen of this country, used to lecture other ones on Human Rights, would obtain asylum in another European country.<\/p>\n

The international pressures therefore accumulate on the Norwegian government that had promised to deal with the necessary reform of its Child Welfare system but has still not done anything. On 27 April, the Commission for Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has adopted\u00a0a report prepared by Valeriu Ghile\u021bchi<\/u>, vice-president of the Parliament of Moldova. This report, that is very critical regarding the abuses\u00a0of\u00a0Barnevernet<\/em>\u00a0and its interferences to the rights of children and families, was ordered from the Moldovan parliamentarian because of the Bodnariu case. It calls Norway and the other member States of the Council of Europe to find a better balance between the interests of the children as they might be considered by State services and the necessity to respect, unless it is absolutely necessary, the right of children not to be separated from their parents against their will.<\/p>\n

The fact is that if Norway commits without any doubt the worse violations in this domain in the name of a totalitarian conception of children education, with a State taking precedence over the parents, other countries in Europe, especially in Western Europe, are following the same direction. This is the case in Germany with the\u00a0Jugendamt<\/em>\u00a0that functions on the same way as the Norwegian\u00a0Barnevernet<\/em>\u00a0where \u201cChildren Welfare\u201d is within the competences of the municipalities and which abuses regularly make the headlines of Polish media due to the importance of the Polish emigration into this country, which, since PiS acceded to power, lead to regular interventions of the Polish government towards the German authorities. But it is also the case of other countries, among them France, which citizens also may want to seek for asylum in former Eastern Europe that is generally more respectful for the autonomy of families as a reaction to the experience of communism if Poland does set a precedent by granting asylum to Silje Garmo and her daughter. And this might be what the Polish government fears as this would lead to tensions with the home countries of this new type of refugees.<\/p>\n

Benefiting from its consultative status at the United Nations Economic and Social Council, the Polish pro family NGO Ordo Iuris is by the way not only active in Norway but also in other European countries.\u00a0For example, it has recently intervened<\/u>\u00a0with the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in favour of the young Alfie Evans whom a British hospital had denied medical treatments in order to accelerate his death, despite the opposition of his parents with the support of the courts. For its fight against the practices of\u00a0Barnevernet<\/em>\u00a0and its action in favour of families in Poland and in Europe, Ordo Iuris\u00a0has received this year<\/u>\u00a0the Family Defense Award of the Christian Coalition of Norway (Kristen Koalisjon Norge<\/em>, KKN).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Translated from French by the Visegr\u00e1d Post.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Poland \u2013 Today in Europe, freedom is in the East, as the Norwegian Silje Garmo did prove it by seeking asylum in Poland. Will Poland grant asylum to the\u00a0Norwegian Silje Garmo\u00a0and her 16 months old daughter Eira who flee the social services of their country? The Minister of Foreign Affairs Jacek Czaputowicz has got on<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":3504,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news"],"acf":{"subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3503"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3503\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/visegradpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}