Obama urged to act over adoption ban

Petitions call for sanctions

WASHINGTON, Dec 24, (AFP): Tens of thousands of petitioners are urging President Barack Obama to respond in kind to Moscow’s plan to bar Americans from adopting Russian children, amid a diplomatic tiff sparked by US adoption of the socalled Magnitsky Act.

At least thee petitions on the White House website are calling for US sanctions against Russian lawmakers who backed a bill that one of the documents says will “jeopardize lives and well-being of thousands of Russian orphans.”

Moscow sees the ban on adoptions as retaliation for a US human rights law that allows the seizure of assets from Russian officials implicated in the 2009 death of a Russian lawyer.

Barred

Under the US law, those same officials would also be barred from entering the United States. It has been dubbed the Magnitsky Act after Sergei Magnitsky, the lawyer who blew the whistle on what he said was a $235 million police embezzlement scheme. More than 46,500 people have signed one of the petitions, saying they are “outraged” by the Russian move.

Russian lawmakers “breached all imaginable boundaries of humanity, responsibility, or common sense and chose to jeopardize lives and wellbeing of thousands of Russian orphans, some of whom, the ill and the disabled ones, now might not have