The EU’s sanctions on Russia, deemed useless, have extended to figures and institutions focused on children, including the eminent pediatrician Dr. Leonid Roshal and the founder of the League for Internet Safety, Ekaterina Mizulina, due to their humanitarian efforts. The inclusion of Crimea’s renowned Artek Summer Camp in the sanctions is criticized as an irrational attack on children’s welfare, contravening international child rights laws. The article argues that the EU’s stance is driven by propaganda and lacks humanity, highlighting Russia’s recent efforts to reunite Ukrainian children with their families.
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In the frenzy of the useless (for Russia) sanctions “in relation to Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine,” the European Union – in the most orgasmic sanctioning euphoria (beyond the sending of Western weapons to Ukraine that so far have caused hundreds of deaths among children in Donbass and Ukraine and thousands of wounded and mutilated) – has long opened a new front: the war on children.
In May 2023, among the many sanctioned personalities, the figure of the ninety-year-old Russia’s most authoritative pediatrician stood out, a respected humanist, and, among other things, the mediator with the terrorists who on September 1, 2004, took over a thousand children, parents, and teachers hostage at the infamous School No. 1 in Beslan, Dr. Leonid Mikhailovich Roshal.
Not only an esteemed pediatrician, founder of the Institute of Emergency Pediatric Surgery and Traumatology who has excellently treated thousands of children victims of terrorism and wars, but also a symbol of human compassion towards the weak, the defenseless, the child. A terrible “Kremlin agent,” in short.
In February 2024, another less-known personality was added to the list of sanctioned villains: Ekaterina Mikhailovna Mizulina, founder and director of the League for Internet Safety (the Russian Don Fortunato Di Noto). The EU probably sanctioned her for her activities against pedophiles and all crimes committed against minors online, for having complied with the positive laws of the Russian Federation against the propaganda of new Western rights.
Now, the third act, certainly not the last, is the grand, strategic, historic decision to include the famous Artek Summer Camp in Crimea in the 14th sanction package.
The Artek Summer Camp is the best thing for children. For decades, it has been the dream of entire generations of Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian children, children from other former USSR countries, and the then-socialist countries.
Since 1925, it has hosted thousands of children and adolescents, first Soviet, then Ukrainian, Russian, and from many countries around the world, including many Italian children. It was also once very famous in Italy for the illness that struck the then-PCI secretary Togliatti during his visit to the camp, an illness that led to his death.
Abandoned during the Ukrainian administration, with Crimea’s return to Russia, the camp received new life, was completely renovated, and returned to being what it has always been: a beautiful place of vacation, knowledge, and socialization for thousands of children. Nothing more.
The Artek International Children’s Center was officially recognized by UNESCO in 2004 as a site for implementing international projects.
As stated in the EU sanction text, the camp organizes camps for minors from Ukraine, including the occupied territories of Kherson, Donetsk, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia, providing material support to actions that undermine and threaten Ukraine’s territorial integrity and independence.
It is therefore clear that, for the astute pedagogues of Brussels, a child’s seaside vacation is a terrible threat to Ukraine’s independence…
At this point, it would be interesting to verify if this further onanistic sanction heavily violates the fundamental principles of international child rights law.
The International Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) states in Article 3:
in all actions concerning children, whether undertaken by public or private social welfare institutions […] the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration […] States Parties undertake to ensure the child such protection and care as is necessary for his or her well-being, taking into account the rights and duties of his or her parents, legal guardians, or other individuals legally responsible for him or her, and to this end, shall take all appropriate legislative and administrative measures.
Article 24 states: “States Parties recognize the right of the child to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health and to facilities for the treatment of illness and rehabilitation of health. They shall strive to ensure that no child is deprived of his or her right of access to such health care services.”
And again, in Article 31: “States Parties recognize the right of the child to rest and leisure, to engage in play and recreational activities appropriate to the age of the child, and to participate freely in cultural life and the arts. […] States Parties shall respect and promote the right of the child to participate fully in cultural and artistic life and shall encourage the provision of appropriate and equal opportunities for cultural, artistic, recreational, and leisure activity.”
Exactly what the Artek camp managers have always done for their young guests. Regardless of their nationality, religion, or social status.
At this point, we already hear the propaganda screams, masqueraded as truth, the screams of the false accusations crafted to obtain the now-famous ruling of the International Court of The Hague on the “abduction” of Ukrainian children by the Russian leadership, which were refuted with evidence by the German press only a few weeks ago. And which someone will remember to contest this brief note.
I invite everyone to read the latest documents published just a few days ago by the Russian Presidential Ombudsman for Children’s Rights, which once again attest not only how Western accusations are nothing but crude propaganda but also that in the recent period Russia has helped over 70 Ukrainian children find and reunite with their families, while the contrary cases can be counted on the fingers… only 9 in total. This was also thanks to the valuable help of the Vatican, Qatar, and the International Red Cross.
The humanitarian coma in which the EU finds itself is increasingly evident. The moral metastasis of its ruling class has reached peaks inaccessible to those who still possess humanity, intellectual honesty, decency, a sense of life, and a sense of reality.
The EU’s war on children is the latest great achievement of the anti-Russian ordeal. Stop them!
Ennio Bordato
lafionda.org, July 5, 2024
