Bernd Michael Uhl
Germany
Wilhelmshaven, 10 September 2001 |
UN-Commission des Droits de l'homme
Avenue de la Paix
1211 Genève 10
Switzerland
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- Please confirm receipt of this document and inform
me about the file number -
Dear Ladies and Gentlemen, The ongoing
Human Rights Violations in Germany, mostly concerning the
non-observance of :
- the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
- the UN-Rights of the Child (CRC),
- the Hague Convention on Civil Aspects of International
Child Abduction,
- the European Convention for the Protection
of Fundamental Freedoms and Human Rights,
- National German laws for the protection of
the child & family and the well-being of the child.
by German Youth Offices (Jugendamt) and authorities,
make it necessary for us to address you with this matter
of utmost importance.
Place of occurence
: Wilhelmshaven / East Frisia / Lower Saxony -
GERMANY
In the present case the Youth Office of the City of
Wilhelmshaven is accused of the following crimes: Legal
inflection which results in :
- Violation of the German Constitution and national
laws (civil code, criminial code) for the protection
of the child & family and the well-being of the
child
- Violation of the Hague Convention on Civil
Aspects of International Child Abduction which has
the sense to guarantee the natural family relationships
and bonds to the child
- Violation of the International Rights of the
Child
- Violation of Human Rights
- Violation of the Authority's responsibility
towards the child and the family
- Refusal to hear complaints regarding the rights
of the child and the parents
- Discrimination and character assassination
of a foreign father
- We are concerned parents and
grandparents of parental child abduction and experts
working in the field of international child abduction
and parental alienation. In the course of our series
of actions and awareness campaigns we have been present
in Washington, Paris, Chicago, Berlin, and Wilhelmshaven
(Germany). During our actions there were parents
among us who had children in the respective cities.
- The South African father Michael
Hickman, whose sons were abducted to Germany in February
1996 by their mother and grandmother, took part in
the Berlin international hunger strike of parents
and grandparents with the leitmotiv "International
Rights of the Child - Children need both parents"
in July-August 2001.
- On 2 August 2001, a delegation
of the German Federal Ministry of Justice and of
the Task Force for the Settlement of International
Conflicts in Child Affairs promised to the Berlin
hunger strikers the following :
- to implement sanctions against
the boycott of access and the abuse of the concerned
children by the child abducting parents
- to improve the German visit/access
regulations which are being strongly criticized
both inside and outside Germany
- The South African citizen Michael Hickman
was the first hunger striker after the Berlin hunger strike
to have an access/custody hearing after the international
hunger strike. The hearing took place in Wilhelmshaven,
Lower Saxony, Germany on 15 August 2001.
- The day of the court hearing
we were engaged in another one of our actions. This
day we held a solidarity watch near the district
family court of Wilhelmshaven to monitor the respect
of Human Rights. The local newspaper reported objectively
about our action. Over the last decades Germany has
been constantly judged by the European Court of Human
Rights due to the violation of the fundamental Human
Rights in respect of a fair trial. Germany was judged
by the European Court of Human Rights for Violations of
Human Rights in Art. 6 (Right to a fair trial) and Art.
8 (Protection of family life) in the case of the family
matter Elsholz on 13 July 2000. Since then it stands
as law : "Visitation/Access Rights are Human Rights!".
- During the court hearing a supervised
visit was fixed for the 21 August 2001 at 15:30.
The social worker of the local Youth office, charged
with the present case, was tasked to meet with the
father and the children together with a psychologist
of the local institute of child psychology. The psychologist
was assigned with the task to evaluate the intitial
contact between the children and their father in
the presence of the social worker. Thereafter the children
and their father together with the social worker were to
make an excursion (e.g. beach, town center etc.)
- On 21 August 2001, at 9:30, the
left-behind father Michael Hickman learnt from the
social worker of the city of Wilhelmshaven that the
planned meeting with the children had been cancelled
because the mother had said that the children did
not want to see their father. This clearly shows the
bias of the social worker of the city of Wilhelmshaven
as well the results of hostile parenting and parental
alienation which is being supported and encouraged
by the Youth Office of Wilhelmshaven. Thereby the social
worker of the Youth Office of Wilhelmshaven has clearly
violated the Rights of the children concerned as well as
the European Convention for the Protection of Fundamental
Freedoms and Human Rights for the concerned and left-behind
parents.
- Hostile parenting and parental
alienation is the general consequence of parental
child abduction. "Parental Child Abduction is Child
Abuse" (see the report by Nancy Faulkner to the United
Nations Convention on Child Rights, 9 June 1999).
- The task and the responsibility
of the Youth Office is to work in the interest and
the well-being of the child and mediate between the
parents in order to guarantee the natural family
relationships and bonds to the child.
- The social Youth Office worker
of the city of Wilhelmshaven took the law into her
own hands in that she did not :
- follow and enforce the court
order of 15 August 2001
- meet at the psychologist's
office together with the left-behind father as
instructed by the court
- ensure that the mother complied
with the court order
- contact the family judge to
ask for sanctions against the mother to prevent the
violation of the court order
- The competent family judge at the district
court of Wilhelmshaven did not intervene to ensure the contact
took place although he had prior knowledge that the mother
had the intention to violate his court order and
that the Youth Office had refused to mediate. The
concerned father would have had to fly back to South
Africa without the children having seen their father.
- The Youth Office of Wilhelmshaven
constantly abuses the Rights of the Children and
left-behind parents and grandparents by refusing
to mediate between the parties. The Youth Office
of Wilhelmshaven supports and encourages :
- parental child abduction
- hostile parenting
- parental alienation
- cultural alienation
- Since 27 August 2001, we are continuing
our international series of actions with the protest Wilhelmshaven
II "Visitation/Access Rights are Human Rights".
- The Youth Office of Wilhelmshaven
has shown no interest in our actions whatsoever and
have refused to speak to us and to the concerned
parent among us even although the Youth Office of
Wilhelmshaven was informed about our action for the
Rights of the Child and Human Rights by :
- the local press
- our personal written invitations
to visit our action
- our personal telephonic invitations
to visit our action
- our personal visit to the Youth
Office
- On 4 September 2001, we personally visited
members of the Youth Office of Wilhelmshaven. As the responsible
person of the action on the spot I tried to awake interest
by the social workers present as to our international
research project "In the Interest of the Child".
The respective Youth Office workers declined all
interest in participation and argued that they were
not competent. I handed over to the social workers
two written invitations for the director of the Youth
Office of Wilhelmshaven to visit our action and to
arrange a meeting for information/presentation. I
invited all present social workers as well to pay us a visit.
They refused the invitation.
- During our international actions
in Willhemhaven we have repeatedly tried to get into
contact with the social Youth Office worker in charge
without result. Eventually we were told that she
was on sick leave.
- On enquiry we were told that
Mr. Viering was deputising for the sick Youth office
worker in charge of the case.
- On 6 September 2001, I called
Mr. Viering, who is the deputy director of the Youth
Office to invite him to familliarise himself with our
actions for the following reasons :
- for him to take part in an
information/presentation meeting about parental
child abduction and parental alienation and our
international actions
- for him to talk to the present
concerned and left-behind parent from South Africa
- for him to receive children's
books donated as presents to the father as presents
for the concerned children with the request to
meet the children and to hand over these presents
from their father
Mr. Viering, the deputy director of
the Youth Office of Wilhelmshaven, refused all invitations
and requests made by me. Mr. Viering refused to mediate
and to speak to the concerned parent. Mr. Viering refused
to receive the presents for the concerned children
and to hand them over.
- According to the statement of Mr. Viering,
he had a political order not to take a stance during election
time which could influence the outcome of the forthcoming
communal elections. Election in Wilhelmshaven was
set for 9 September 2001. Mr. Viering refused to speak
to me further. Mr. Viering hung up without making
apology. The Youth Office is neither a political organ
nor a political party; neither should it be assuming
this role. The task and the responsibility of the
Youth Office is to work in the interests and the welll-being
of the child and to mediate between the parents in
order to guarantee the natural family relationship and
bonds to the child. It is quite obvious that the present
Youth Office is not run by the state but by political parties.
According to Mr. Viering, deputy director, the Youth
Office of Wilhelmshaven works "In the Interest of
political parties" and not "In the Interests
of the Child".
- On 6 September 2001, after having
called Mr. Viering, deputy director of the Youth
Office of Wilhelmshaven, I then called Mr. Jürjens,
the director of the Youth Office of Wilhelmshaven
and once again Mr. Viering answered. He informed me
that he was deputising in the absence of his superior,
the director, who was on leave. Mr. Viering, deputy
director of the Youth Office of Wilhelmshaven, refused
to inform me when Mr. Jürjens, the director of
the Youth Office of Wilhelmshaven, would be back from leave
so that I could contact him directly. Mr. Viering
refused to speak to me further and once again hung
up without excusing himself.
- On 6 September 2001, after having
attempted to make contact to the director of the
Youth Office of Wilhelmshaven, I then called the
personal secretary of Mr. Menzel, the Mayor of Wilhelmshaven.
I invited the Mayor to visit our action for information/presentation
purposes and to discuss the problems that we had
experienced with the Youth Office. In adition, I
asked his personal secretary to forward the request
to the Mayor, to explain who in Wilhelmshaven gave
the order to the Youth Office to act accordingly to political
guidelines. I requested that the Mayor return my call, this
he did not do.
- On 7 September when we tried
to get into contact with Mr.Viering by phone, we
were told that Mr.Viering was on sick leave.
- The behaviour and the argument
of the Youth Office of Wilhelmshaven is typical of
current Youth Office practise in Germany. This is
the typical behaviour of the Youth Office as part
of the supporting environment of an abducting parent
after parental child abduction with the aim to break
all contact between the concerned children and the
left-behind parent.
- General : The Consequences
and Sequential Mechanisms of Parental Child Abduction
After parental child abduction the
abducting parent generally attempts to :
- legalise the child abduction
by gaining custody decisions in his/her favour
in the refugee state/environment often by dubious
means
- justify morally the child abduction
to the concerned children, himself/herself, the
respective families, the neighbourhood and the entire
refugee environment
Therefore the abducting parent will
generally blame the left-behind parent for his/her
own deeds saying that they had no other option but
to do what they did to distract from their own crime
against humanity. His/her family naturally supports
the abducting parent in this strategy as they don't
want to allow the perception that their own family member
has committed a criminal and inhumane act. Together they attempt
with every method possible to convince their environment
that their actions were necessary and justified.
The general strategies
employed to justify on moral and legal grounds their
actions are :
- to gain court custody custody
hearings without the left-behind parent, without
being notified of the pending court hearing
- to bring about discrimination,
defamation, humiliation, and crimianalisation of
the left-behind parent :
- the abducting parent and
his/her environment accuses the left-behind parent
of the intention to commit the same crime of child
abduction which they themselves have committed.
A second reason is that the abducting parent argues
that the left-behind parent will influence the
children negatively against the abducting parent.
Naturally the abducting parent denies that he/she has
been negatively influencing the children against the
left-behind parent since the abduction. (These are
among others the major reasons why only supervised
contact is granted by the courts between the concerned
children, parents, and grandparents. In Germany,
these supervised contacts are mainly supervised
by social workers of the local Youth Office.)
- the supervised contact humilates
both the children and the left-behind parent
in an environment which is inhumane in the extreme
and reminiscent of being in jail. (The supervised
contact gives the impresion to the children that
something is very wrong with their left-behind
parent that they have not seen for a long time.
The concerned parents and grandparents are depicted
as criminals.)
Consequently, the abducting environment
to justify their actions leave themselves no choice
other than to abuse the basic rights of the concerned
children. Hostile parenting and parental alienation
are strategies applied against children to destroy their
natural rights and bonds to their left-behind parent.
Finally they deny their desire to contact with the left-behind
environment. The logic of
this mechanism is based on the following. Should the abducting
parent not affect and hinder the relationsship between
abducted children and left-behind parent, the children
:
- would keep interest in their
left-behind parent and family and would confront
the abducting environment with questions about
the left-behind environment. (This is not in
the interest of the abducting environment because
they want the concerned children to forget or even hate
the left-behind environment. Otherwise the children could
have doubts about the behaviour of the abducting environment.)
- would like to keep the natural
contact with the left-behind parent and grandparents
- would like to keep interest
in the language and culture of the left-behind parent,
as well as in the previous country of residence
(This culteral alienation
leads to racism.)
- would like to retain their
bicultural identity
- would like to visit the left-behind
parent and grandparents at their former habitual
residence. (In this case, the abducting environment
fears that the children would like to stay within
the left-behind environment. The abducting environment
is quite aware that they exercise constant pressure
on the children and abuse them to have them on
their side.)
The more the left-behind parent and
his/her environment tries to keep contact with the
children, the more ferocious the abducting environment
reacts to prevent contact to the left-behind environment
according to the strategies mentioned above. If the
refugee environment of the abducting parent has already
racist tendencies in their general mentality as experienced
in Germany these strategies against the left-behind
environment of abducted children is even more intense.
- The behaviour and argument by Mr. Viering,
deputy director of the Youth Office of Wilhelmshaven
and the general attitude of the Youth Office of Wilhelmshaven
clearly shows that they are actively involved in and support
the abducting environment. In Wilhelmshaven, a German
town of about 80.000 habitants, it would strongly
appear that political, private, and financial connections
are being used for the ongoing abuse of the rights
of the children.
Yours respectfully Bernd Michael Uhl |
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