By Zoe Horace
Monrovia- A Liberian woman living in the Norwegian capital Oslo, Madam Leona Konah Urey has reiterated call seeking justice from that country government in getting her four children back to her.
Narrating her ordeal to Liberia Public Radio in tears and pain via mobile phone on Tuesday April 23, from Norway, Leona konah Urey said she feels unfilled and wants to commit suicide only because of the absence of her children especially as an African mother.
Her story came to spotlight in Liberia after granting an interview with front page Africa online which was published on March 25, 2019.
She told Front page Africa that in 2013 and 2016 respectively, she attempted following her children’s case but got arrested and placed behind bars for eight months and was later released due to pressure and advocacy from her husband including her lawyers.
In a 2017 BBC’s program: our world, parents stormed the streets of Oslo and other areas campaigning and accusing the state of brutally and aggressively and accusing the state of brutally and aggressively taking their children into Care for no good reasons.
Children taken away from parents
Madam Urey further told our reporter that currently hundreds and thousands of parents in Norway are facing similar problem but are afraid to speak out for fear of exit from the country mainly Africans.
Leona indicated that she was restrained from seeing her children as they alleged that she beat on them and also ill-treated them of which her children were taken away from her up til press time.
She said those who seized the also demanded her DNA but she refused on grounds that her change or crime was not disclosed to her something she noted and claimed that they had a different intent and or sinister motive.
According her it all started when her Son Andreas went to a school named Kempen and was insulted as African monkey, something she said provoked her son as he Andreas jumped into fistfight with his school mates.
She told Liberia Public Radio in an interview that her four children are living in the Norway but in separate locations, a normal thing they do so that parents can’t easily have a trace of their children.
”I can’t see my children but when I pay people to go find them the story I receive is so heart breaking”, Leona intoned. Narrating further Leona added that at times the stolen children are taken to rich people to be ‘sold and ‘abuse’.
‘Not afraid no longer’
“l am not afraid to say it because it is too much for me to bear any longer”; Mrs. Urey adds as she broke down in tears reflecting on her ordeal. According to records, about fifty six European countries are against stealing children in Norway.
However, according to the Norwegian children protection services Banavana, they do all they can just to keep families together, no self-intent, but parents who can no longer set their eye’s on their children have different experiences as they are just parents for the name sake. Banavana added people whose children are taken from them can’t understand, touch or get the feelings of their children.
She said she complained the case to the Liberian embassy in Brussels but has not seen any tangible steps being taken to reunite her with her children.
Protest at EU Embassy
Meanwhile family members of tear-jerking parent Leona family and some human rights group alone with students are planning a big protest at the European embassy. The protest is intended to draw the attention of the national government on the issue.
