Norway's Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Store, in an exclusive interview to The Hindu, strongly refuted some interpretations/allegations that his country is trying to create some kind of perfect state model on how people can live.
Asked what happens when there was an over-stepping of authority in a country such as Norway that has set itself high standards of transparency and public accountability, Mr. Store observed that any state intervention into the private sphere of people was extremely serious and a last resort business – it had to be. But in order to make these decisions also sufficiently transparent and accountable, they needed to be under the rule of law.
He said:
“And if ministers could intervene and block issues according to their political beliefs or their own assessments and even if the bulk of these decisions were reasonable, at the end of the day we would be sliding down the scale, not of family policies, but of the accountability of the legal system.
“In cases where there is intervention in families that are purely Norwegian, the situation is dramatic in itself. When we add cultural differences to that, it becomes worse, aggravated. In this globalised world people travel, they settle down in different cultural settings and I can see the curve of our own consular cases going up.
“Norwegians end up settling in different places and getting in trouble because the places where they have chosen to live have different traditions. We see the same thing here. One-third of all prisoners in Norwegian jails are foreigners. And that places a strain on our legal system and on our prison system. And when you live in Norway and you pay your taxes, you have equal rights in the Norwegian welfare state.”
Commenting on the massive adverse publicity against Norway in the wake of the Bhattacharya case in India, Mr. Store said: “The end station will be a legal decision, which I hope will lead to a satisfactory end to this story. And then I hope, that we will have mutual respect – in the sense that much of what I have seen in the papers and on the Blogosphere about Norway, frankly speaking, has not been very pleasant, especially for someone who, as Foreign Minister, has been driving our India policy in order to step it up.”
Click here to read the full transcript of this interview
Keywords: Norwegian laws, child protection, Bhattacharya couple, cultural differences, child custody, India-Norway ties
Mr. Ramesh
Norway has never pretended that it has perfect laws and that application of these
laws always happens in a perfect manner. No country in the world can make that
claim.
Decisions such as the above are taken by public bodies - which are not infallible -
can and are appealed to the courts which have the final legally binding say.
Furthermore, domestic decisions in Norway can be appealed to the European Court
of Human Rights in Strasbourg and overturned if found to be in violation of the
European Convention on Human Rights which was ratified by Norway in 1952.
However, as Lyder Horn points out above, there are no special laws for VIPs,
Indians, Belgians, politically connected people, rich people or people with media
access and savvy. In fact, the public services and courts dont care if you are a
maharaja or even a south Indian raja !
The checks & balances of a democracy, whilst far from perfect, exist in Norway.
From what we have seen, the state which the Norwegians have created is far from perfect. It is so full of loopholes that it simply lacks all the checks and balances which one expects in a democracy.
Child abuse happens in both Norway and India. There are no "special laws" for indians living and working in Norway regarding kids. There is obviously more to this case than just "having the kids in bed with them" or "feeding by hand". Anyone who believes this have clearly no idea about norwegian child welfare. Indians need to understand that child welfare workers are not allowed to take the case to the media.
putting small children under foster care till they become 18 yrs old
is so inhuman, depriving children's of their own culture is a cruelty.
convicted couple are not citizen of norway. how can they apply VISA
for children by themselves.
Indian Government should take it to highest level.
It amounts to defacto kidnapping of children.
very quaint Mr. Jonas Gahr Store! the state and legal system now decide on how to
raise children. we will soon have common law, food intake, uniform, hair-cut,
productivity, toilet timings decide by "higher" authority than parents. that's what god
made us for-Norway government has founded its highest call-"protocol".
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