Elżbieta Witek made the statement at an international meeting in Poland's parliament on Tuesday, public broadcaster Polish Radio’s IAR news agency reported.
Witek, who is Speaker of the Sejm, Poland's lower house), chaired the talks, which focused on legal support for refugees from Ukraine, according to officials.
Guests included Olena Kondratiuk, the Second Deputy Chair of Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada parliament, as well as British lawmakers Elizabeth Butler-Sloss and Karen Bradley, Polish state news agency PAP reported.
The meeting explored the issue of “strengthening the legislative response to human trafficking risks for refugees from Ukraine,” according to the IAR news agency.
‘Various forms of human trafficking’
Witek told reporters as she opened the event: ”It’s very valuable to be able to meet in an international group because only joint action on an international scale gives us a chance to be effective in this enormous effort.”
She said that “human trafficking is a cruel operation that interferes with a person’s life, bodily integrity and their right to make their own decisions.”
Poland’s top lawmaker added that refugees from war-torn Ukraine were being "targeted by various forms of human trafficking,” which “very often focuses on women and children.”
She warned: “In wartime, women and children become easy victims for traffickers as refugees.”
Witek also said that “the number of online searches for sexual services involving Ukrainian women and children has increased by 600 percent” since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, while “trafficking in pregnant women is also on the rise.”
‘Ruthless system of illegal adoption’
Meanwhile, “Ukrainian children are being subjected to another cruel operation,” Witek added.
She told reporters: “Ukrainian children are falling victim to a ruthless system of illegal adoption, designed by Russia to destroy the Ukrainian nation.”
She stated: “Russian officials abduct them from their homes, deport them to Russia, detain them in re-education camps, strip them of their very identity, and then put them in Russian foster families or adoptive families.”
She warned that “Russia is trafficking in human beings to benefit its nation and its imperial plans.”
During Tuesday’s meeting, Witek quoted testimonies from Ukrainian children who had been deported and put through a Russian re-education camp, the PAP news agency reported.
Witek emphasised: “A country that abuses the most innocent, children and youth, deserves to be condemned in the strongest terms and its actions deserve the highest possible punishment.”
She said that Russia has already deported more than 19,000 Ukrainian children, according to the latest estimates, and only some 400 of them have returned.
Witek urged the international community to step up efforts to support child victims of Russia’s ongoing aggression against Ukraine, the PAP news agency reported.
Poland’s top lawmaker stated: “The more the international community understands this situation, the more effective will be its response to Russia’s actions and the more valuable its support to Ukraine.”
Witek added: “I believe that thanks to joint international efforts, the nightmare being endured by Ukrainian children will end and they will have equal reasons to smile as their peers who are safe in Europe.”
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s Kondratiuk, who also held private talks with her Polish counterpart, thanked Polish authorities and “all the Polish people” for helping her compatriots fleeing the Russian invasion.
She stressed that Russia was solely responsible for the fact that millions of Ukrainians had sought shelter across Europe.
“They didn’t flee Ukraine in search of a better life," Kondratiuk said, as quoted by the PAP news agency. "They fled bombardment, they fled rockets, they fled shelling, they fled killings, and they fled rape."
In February, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and the head of the European Union’s executive Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, launched an initiative aimed at bringing back Ukrainian children that have been abducted by Russia.
In May, the Polish government announced a number of policies to help Ukraine repatriate children that have been forcibly deported to Russia.
In March, the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin, accusing him of being responsible for the war crimes of “unlawful deportation of children and unlawful transfer of people from occupied areas of Ukraine to Russia.”
Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, launching the largest military campaign in Europe since World War II.
Tuesday is day 489 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
(pm/gs)
Source: IAR, PAP, wprost.pl