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Three cheers for Italy!

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Mila View Drop Down
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  Quote Mila Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: Three cheers for Italy!
    Posted: 29-Nov-2005 at 22:49
During the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Italy accepted thousands of Bosnian children.


Parents in Sarajevo say goodbye to their children, leaving on a bus convoy for Croatia, then to Italy by ferry. Two babies on this exact bus were killed by snipers as it raced out of the city.

While this guaranteed the safety of these infants, todlers, and children it wasn't without some controversy. The legal time period which Bosnian parents were given to reclaim their children from Italy passed before the war ended and hundreds of children - whose parents were still alive and well - were given up for adoption.

Initially Italy refused to release the records of these adoptions and even when they did, the process was stalled because several of the first children identified chose to remain with their adoptive families in Italy. Still other parents pressed on for answers, especially the parents whose children were infants when they were sent away.

"Where are the children, and who sold them to the goddamn Catholics!?" one woman screamed at a United Nations press conference in Sarajevo, a seminar that had nothing to do with this issue. The soundbite became the soundbite to represent the conflict.

Now new charges have been launched and Italy is cooperating fully, much to the pleasure of these parents. Flowers piled up throughout the day in front of the Italian embassy in Sarajevo, here's the story:

ITALIAN PRESIDENT RESPONDS TO UZEIR KAHVIC

SARAJEVO, November 29 (FENA) Uzeir Kahvic, the father of Sedina Kahvic, who was in 1992 evacuated by convoy from the Childrens Home Bjelave to Italy, where she was adopted, on Tuesday expressed gratitude to Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, who accepted his plea for help, and was especially touched by the humanity and understanding expressed by President Ciampi, given that Kahvic received a response to his plea in only four days.

In line with the Italian protocol, the response to Kahvic was sent by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The letter says that the Court for Minors in Milan had sent to this ministry a series of requests for hearing the biological parents, which was to be forwarded to the Italian Embassy in Sarajevo, for the purpose of hearing the parents and issuing decisions on returning children to their fatherland or proclaiming a state of abandon in cooperation with BiH authorities.

Regarding the special case of the minor you are informing us about, the Court for Minors in Milan had previously sent a request to the BiH Ministry of Foreign Affairs for hearing her father and mother before proclaiming the state of adoption, is said in the letter.

This document can be regarded as an official stand of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Uzeir Kahvic thanked the Italian President because thanks to his letter, after ten years of the search for his daughter, Kahvic has finally learned the truth about the guilty party for the legal separation from his daughter.

After submitting criminal charges against persons responsible for trafficking in children and abuse of office in BiH before the BiH Prosecutors Office, Uzeir Kahvic also raised charges against Justice Ilaria Simi of the Court for Minors in Milan before the Milan Prosecutors Office.

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