loreta said:
Maybe also the culture in Norway made people very "robotic", mechanical. If you differ a little you are not accepted. Nordic countries are very strange and very restricted, I know, I lived 30 years in a Nordic country.
There is some truth to this - in Norway we call it "Jante's Law" after an Axel Sandemose book where this law states that "You shall not think that you are better than us, you shall not think that you are anything", etcetera. So it is to some degree ingrained in the culture to look with scepticism towards anything that differs from the norm, and that contributes to making cases like this problematic.
Usually Indian parents are good parents and are very found of their children. If the problem was the food, why they did not teach the parents a good diet instead of taking their kids away? There is also solutions when a problem like this.
The reason for the children being taken is not stated due to the wow of silence that the involved parties have due to their profession, but it cannot have been due to feeding/sleeping routines - we can be backwards up here, but there are limits to this. There is some information on the reasons behind this in my translation of the article above:
"The intervention has nothing to do with those aspects, but I am not allowed to comment on the foundation for deciding to intervene. It is problematic for us when there is put forward a description of events that isn't rooted in reality, he says. The family's lawyer, Svein Kjetil Lode Svendsen, confirms that it isn't because of hand-feeding and sleeping in the same bed that the children were taken out of their home. "
"It is based on an evaluation of the totality of the children's home enviroment. But these are among the things the parent's were criticized for, along with the fact that the children had little toys at home. But if you visit an ordinary Indian family you will find that they do not have a lot of toys for their children. It was also stated that the children didn't have socks on them, and only ate rice and youghurt, and that this isn't a healthy diet for kids, Svendsen says. "
"Even though there are other factors contributing to the decision of the social services that neither the lawyer nor the social services wish to comment upon, the lawyer states that the exposed weaknesses in the nurturing of the children is related to temporary maladjustment to Norwegian society.
The newsmagazine "Ny tid" has gained access to the social services' claim to the higher authorities before being granted right to intervene. In addition to reasons stated above, it is commented upon a lack of interaction between mother and children, where the mother didn't look after her children's emotional needs. The mother is also reported to have slapped her son, but stopped doing this when she was told in kindergarten that this is illegal in Norway.
The sosial services also reacted to the mother being abrupt in her movements when she lifted her youngest daughter, and that she didn't hold her daughter properly when breast feeding.
Neither the parents nor the children are Norwegian citizens. The father Anarup Bhattacharya has a work permit in Norway until the eigth of March 2012.
- What's special in this case is that the kids have a foreign nationality. If the social services wishes to keep the children, they have to apply for permannent residency on humanitarian grounds, Svendsen says.
In a press statement from january 2012 the Indian Foreign Administration states that they do not see that the circumstances in this case justifies the extreme measure of separating the children from their parents in a long term perspective.
The social services' decision in this case have been met with critque from several instances. The children were originally taken out of the home because of an acute situation. They have been in foster home since May 12th 2011, and according to "Ny Tid" there has been a great deal of conflicting views inside the social services concerning the childrens' future.
The parents appealed the ruling and it was then initially ruled in favour of the parent's view; that the social services had misunderstood the situation. The parents argued that it was the presence of the representative from the social services that caused the problems, because the mother was distraught over the visit. The decision to take the children was then ruled to be wrong.
But the social services appealed to a higher court instance, and it was there ruled that both children should be taken from their parents. This verdict is appealed by the parents, but the case hasn't been given a date for treatment of the court so far."
