Turning children into orphans because they have a disability to make money-East or West – the political leaders are the same in their exploitation of vulnerable children our most vulnerable in society for money and gain and letting them to suffer with no justice or protection…
A recent article by Aaron Parsley (March 4th, 2022 People.com) noted that 100 young Ukrainians with physical and mental disabilities are among the 1 million refugees who have “made the precarious winter journey to cross Ukraine’s borders and escape attacks by Russian invaders”. These children are residents of a boys orphanage and girls orphanage both in Kyiv who arrived by train in Hungary and are on route to city of Opole in Southwestern Poland.
I hope they will be safe and do well in Poland, it is irony that these orphans are now on the move out of Ukraine even if it is to escape a terrible enemy the Russian forces not caring who they kill…The orphans have disabilities because when you have a disability in the Ukraine parents automatically give you up into an orphanage and there are many children in the 700 orphanages running in the Ukraine on a Russian type model. These children have parents and extended family, but instead of being nurtured and given a family to grow up in they are put in an orphanage simply because they have an intellectual or physical disability – it is gross tragedy and great wrong for those children. Maybe Poland will be better for them. Because life in a Ukrainian orphanage can be a living hell for many there and they are alone in their misery with none of their family members visiting them. For shame this is a disgrace. I hope this all changes now. It is heartbreaking. The poor babies many under three when they are locked up in the orphanages.
Another article by “Hope and Homes for children” February 2021, notes that “many single parents are coerced into putting their children into orphanages” (Olga Kurylenko August 2021). These children are locked up alone and can face torture, sexual violence and trafficking. Single parents live in so much poverty in Ukraine that they are easily coerced into putting their disability child in such places. Olga, a girl whose single mother did raise her in the Ukraine notes that there 100,000 children are put in orphanages and locked up yet they are not really orphans but have families. Most of these children have disabilities and 9 out of 10 of them have families and could return home to the love and security of a family instead. “Another report by disability rights International exposed how disabled children living in Ukrainian institutions face forced labour, routine beating, sexual abuse, forced abortions, drugging, shackling, exposure to brothels operating from orphanage basements and trafficking for illegal organ transplants.” How evil is that and how much darkness is over these vulnerable children with no one to defend them? Not even their own parents?
The article further notes that in 2020 the Ukraine government had to start moving these tens of thousands of children out of orphanages and into families where they could be supported to grow up with love and individual care, and as Olga says, that every child needs that one on one love. However, heartbreakingly Ukraine’s promise to end the use of orphanages for all children has been broken in 2021 since the Cabinet Ministers decided to continue locking up vulnerable children under the age of three. They announced that 50,000 disabled children will stay warehoused indefinitely in these “terrifying Soviet-style institutions”.
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Mark Waddington notes (2021 CEO Hope and Homes for Children) If Ukraine continues to lock up babies and disabled children, it will violate international law and commit tens of thousands of children to a childhood of confinement and misery. He also adds “Ukraines’s orphanage system is a huge and a major draw on the public purse, employing 60,000 people and the funding that supports these salaries and buildings would be far more effectively deployed to reintegrate children back with their families, or where this isn’t possible, develop alternative family care arrangements like fostering”.
The Ukrainian government promised to end the orphanages and locking up vulnerable children and has reneged on it last year. Now it has been invaded by the Russians, the government leaders in Ukraine now might get a little taste of the horror and suffering they put poor baby vulnerable children through in the money-making orphanages in their country. They did not care about them. They turned their backs on the suffering of the children taken from their families or thrown out and put in orphanages because they a disability. Now the politicians themselves and their families are suffering at the Russian invasion.
I hope the vulnerable orphan children get treated better wherever they end up because this was a shocking violate of human rights for all these orphans of which 90% were disability and very vulnerable their lives made worse by being separated from a family’s love and put in prison type institutions. The 2019 United Nations Resolution on the rights of a child, which Ukraine supported commits all 193 member state to eliminating orphanages. The Ukraine government agreed to end the orphanages but decided instead that money was more important to them. Now they have lost everything anyway due to the Russian invasion.
When a nation ignores its vulnerable children and people’s needs and actually makes money out of them and uses them for the propping up of their economy – even children with disabilities to use as commodities and make a profit – they are a despicable kind of politician that does that ?– the cabinet of Ukraine deciding to keep 50,000 children under age three years old, the most tender age of a child, still locked up for their furthering of their economy no doubt. These children continue to suffer. Shame on those leadership. Making money out of another’s suffering the scourge of capitalist greed in a communist country or should I say democracy.
However, it is not so far from what Australia does now turning disabilities into a business they let providers greed rue the day and they say ‘well it is a business’ if the business decides not to look after disability persons or now help those in its care. It is a ‘business’ says the NDIS commission when we complain about abuse, neglect or stealing of funds. Yet they do not apply health and safety rules to these disability businesses like other businesses, no they act as if they do not need to. Again these political leaders, even the so-called Christian ones are using our children’s need for care, and parents need for support to look after their vulnerable children, to prop up the economy. They put in the NDIS and a lot of administration people who do not visit the disability places to check on whats happening and make money out of the vulnerable children and adults who depend on care being given to them. Yet the government refuses to put in health and safety rules and protect those disability children from harm with mandatory cctv cameras…not wanting any providers to get in trouble for abuse. Are we living in Charles dickens time? where the poor are treated as dirt and the old and infirmed are hung out to dry – where children are sold on the street or work in factories to their deaths, normal children back then – harmed and died in their work places young as 6 years old… now we see parents of disability children finding funding cut from their ndis plans and when their children are harmed at day programs or respite and residential it is ignored and treated as if normal that the vulnerable should be harmed. This is ignorant, backward and discrimination to the very vulnerable and the nonverbal in disabilities. Animals get treated better and with more regard.
We are the West, meant to be so developed, whereas the Ukraine and many countries in the Eastern Block are poorer and still developing, yet we still do not treat the vulnerable in disabilities with high regard or respect their human right to freedom from harm and to be included in society choosing to use them as commodities. We say we do give the vulnerable equality of human rights, and then refuse to put mandatory CCTV cameras in disabilities places because providers don’t want to be accountable for hurting our children or stealing their funds – they are never checked.
Shame on the leadership of this country also. They know what the right thing is to do and then they do not do it preferring rather to fill their coffers with filthy maman, the money they make from the suffering of the very vulnerable or save by not helping parents and disability children. Do we need an invasion to make things change? I hope not. This Australian government needs to do the right thing by the vulnerable in its land and not ignore the need just because they don’t want to spend money on them. They want the providers to keep making the gold doing what? Keeping people employed at workers or office workers there at the NDIS, while our children do not get protection from harm in the hands of greedy devious providers and support workers with dollars in their eyes. Why would the workers think any other way when they are mostly uneducated, untrained and have not even studied for disabilities care – they are in it for the money and nothing else is expected of them. That is a low standard to put our very vulnerable children in their care is frightening as our nonverbal and very vulnerable are harmed and die so easily with little justice or repercussions. Parents know they have little choice of where to send their vulnerable disability children and adult children when they need to. Many providers just do not care. This is a developed wealthy country it needs to do right by the very vulnerable instead of just making money from them while pandering to international interests. It is a mandate from the United Nations that we must protect those with disabilities which Australia signed – how about living up to that responsibility?
Sign my petition: change.org/disabilitycameras
All the best
Anndrea x