Lithuanian Talk Show Berates Norway for Seizing Foreign Children

Norway seizing foreign children and fostering them to Norwegian parents has drawn ire from a Lithuanian talk show which lashed out at Oslo's drive to contain "the highest inbreeding in the whole world", the Norwegian news website the Local reported on Monday.

The issue was discussed during the talk show "An Hour with Ruta" that was broadcast by the Lithuanian independent TV channel LNK last week. The program included a slot on Norway’s controversial Child Protection Service (Barnevernet), which the show host said was deliberately targeting Lithuanian children.

The show began with a brief intro claiming that "in Norway, Lithuanian children are taken away from their parents; Lithuanian children in Norway are a sought-after commodity."  Show host Rūta Mikelkevičiūte then talked to Neringa Ozolina, a Lithuanian based in the Norwegian town of Alesund, who has become an authority in the Baltic state on Norway's child protection regime.

"The birth rate is the lowest in Norway. Inbreeding in Norway is the greatest in the world, and the same is true of the percentage of children born with Down syndrome and other birth defects," Ozolina said.

Earlier this year, Lithuania's Gražina Leščinskiene hit local headlines after her son Gabrieliaus was taken into care by Norway's Child Protection Service; she is now struggling to get her son returned home.

According to Norway’s Ambassador to Lithuania Dag Halvorsen, "it is said that there is a history of inbreeding in Norway and that there is a high incidence of Down syndrome among Norwegian children; they argue therefore that it is important for Norwegian authorities to obtain fresh, foreign children, such as Lithuanian ones, to strengthen the genetic material."

In another development earlier this year, Czech President Miloš Zeman accused Norway's Child Protection Services of acting "like the Nazis" by not allowing a Czech mother of the two seized boys to talk to them in Czech.

Russia has, in turn, repeatedly slammed Norways's custody policies over the seizure of children with Russian citizenship from their Russian-speaking families.

CORRECTION: The original version of this article incorrectly quoted Norway's Ambassador to Lithuania Dag Halvorsen; this mistake has been corrected.