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Representative Viktor Kuchinsky suggests sterilizing parents with alcohol addiction problems

Lawmaker Viktor Kuchinsky has suggested enacting a law that would allow the forced sterilization of parents with alcohol addiction problems.

He put forward the proposal when the House of Representatives was debating on Monday a presidential decree that will allow authorities to remove children from "immoral" or neglectful parents without a court warrant starting next January.

The decree will require the parents to fully compensate the government for the maintenance of their children. It will allow local authorities to evict "uncaring" parents from their homes and rent out the apartments, with the revenues to be spent on the maintenance of the children. Unemployed parents who have abandoned their children and turned down job offers will face prison sentences.

Mr. Kuchinsky said that the measures were inadequate. "Those born to drink will never become sober," he stressed.

He suggested transferring the ownership of alcohol addicts' apartments to their children and setting up "special camps" in the exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant for such parents.

The Representative also called for harsh penalties against drugs dealers and traffickers. He suggested shooting foreign dealers and smugglers to death in "public places" and sentencing Belarusian nationals to life imprisonment.

"An important thing is to stop fearing to raise problems that require a surgical rather than medical intervention," he stressed. //BelaPAN