Belarus - Terra Incognita

Anthie’ and Alexandra just woke up
Holidays in Greece July, 2016. Anthie’ and Alexandra just woke up

The Purpose of the Website

About Me

Dear Audience, 

My name is Nicolaos Cheropoulos, and I am Greek by ethnicity and a Swedish citizen. My parents brought me to Sweden in 1965, where I grew up and studied. Unfortunately, I do not have any siblings, and I lost my parents quite early. My beloved mother passed away suddenly in 1995, and my dear father died in 2000 after a five-year-long battle with cancer. Unfortunately, I could not save his life despite all efforts made.

At some point in my life, I left Sweden and went to Hellas (Greece), where I have lived for almost twenty years. I learned to speak the Greek language fluently and worked as a production engineer for about seven years before fully committing to my hobby, technical analysis, focusing on investment strategies. In essence, this has become my main occupation since 1995. Now, I am teaching math at a high school in Stockholm.
 

I returned to Stockholm in 2008, before
Greece’s financial crisis broke out entirely.

 

The decision to create the websites Anthie-Alexandra-Abducted2017.org, Anthie2012.org,  Alexandra2015.org, Anthie-Alexandra.org, and AnthieAlexandra.org was to share my personal experience and provide essential facts and advice to any left-behind parents out there. The topic of parental abduction is becoming increasingly popular by virtue of the increased migration of the population around the world.

Website Links:

# anthie2012.orgalexandra2015.organthie-alexandra-abducted2017.org
anthie-alexandra.org # anthiealexandra.org

Unfortunately, when two people of different nationalities meet and decide to have children, they very rarely realize all the possible consequences that will trigger. And, with an average 40% – 50% divorce rate recorded in most countries, sooner or later, many international couples may bump into an issue of how to split the custody over their children.

A few cases result in parental abduction. The child or children are usually abducted into another country with the left-behind parent, and the child or children intentionally become isolated from each other. That is a gross violation and abuse of “Child Rights”, which in most cases creates irrevocable trauma to the child.

If your child has been kidnapped to a civilized and law-respecting country, you can still consider yourself lucky! You will at least have a slight chance to achieve some legal compromise. However, if your child or children have been abducted into a country that lives its own life under heavy censorship and dictatorship, prepare yourself for the worst-case scenario. It will be very tough to achieve any justice at all in a country that ignores “The Hague Convention”, mandatory procedures, morals, or ethics.

Also, the mental mindset of the many judicial workers in these countries works in a way that they literally find pleasure in making the foreign parent as miserable and humiliated as possible. For some reason, this is how they validate their feeling of importance and power.

As we know, such behavior typically occurs when it is encouraged from the top. As a result, people living isolated from the outside world feel secure and valuable in their own backyard.

Currently, there are not too many (yet) cases of international parental abductions in Belarus – the number of cases is at about 19 (2018/2020), although it is growing each year. As such, you won’t be able to find too much insider information when litigating your abduction case in Belarus.

Therefore, when I started my litigation in 2017, I entered a Terra Incognita, where I naively thought my case was undeniable. However, assuming that if my legal team follows the principles of The Hague Convention, things will be resolved positively for my children and me in the end. 

However, after my litigation was over in the middle of 2021, having the experience I have now, witnessing how the judicial system in Belarus “works” and having to swallow all the possible judicial insults, absurdities, and even mockery. As a result, I lost respect for the judicial order of Belarus.

Ultimately, I realized that the best thing I can do with my personal experience is to make it public to ensure that any new left-behind parents forced to deal with this country are much better prepared (both mentally and legally) than myself. As such, I will publish all the relevant and essential information and legal documentation related to my battle for the return of my children.

The Website, ActionAgainstChildAbduction.com-AACA, published in April 2020, will become a valuable source for those who want to dig deeper. The copies of the legal documentation can be used as a perfect case study for many universities, law students, or even law professionals worldwide. Once you go through all the details from the beginning through the end, you will understand that, unfortunately, the implementation of The Hague Convention is insufficient.

The question is, why is that? I started to think that the whole Hague Convention organization has become a form of government business to create and keep jobs for many government workers worldwide artificially, just as another form of bureaucracy to feed the local and international legal system.

The Child Abduction Convention has been in place for many years. Still, for some reason, some signatory states (such as Belarus and Japan) do not respect the signatures placed on these Treaties/Agreements at all.

On the other hand, some governments that are supposed to fight for the rights of the left-behind parents prioritize their own business and political goals and not over (your) abducted children. So even though they are also their citizens, many governments won’t do much if they make much money in the other country or have any further more substantial economic or political interests there.

It’s a jungle out there, in which you, as the left-behind parent, have to navigate very carefully yet remain resilient as, at the end of the day, you will become the sole and the primary leader of this battle – because nobody else cares of your children more than you.

Additionally, the websites anthie2012.org, alexandra2015.org, anthie-alexandra-abducted2017.org, anthie-alexandra.org, and anthiealexandra.org are a perfect way to expose the judicial atrocities that are happening and being tolerated in Belarus, where many mediocre and incompetent law “professionals” have perfectioned themselves, vandalizing and perverting the law. However, again, they do it because – they can. They are even encouraged to do so because this is in line with the overall political atmosphere of current Belarus, where the local general public is being abused by all of these self-entitled “Parasites,” as I call them.

Τhese five websites are now linked with the initial and main website that was published early in 2020, AACA-ActionAgainstChildAbduction.com.

Since the abduction of my children in April 2017, I have been fighting for their return, dealing with the Belarusian judicial platform under The Hague Treaty regarding Child Abduction. Hundreds (if not thousands) of pages have been written and documented in the courts. However, the Belarusian courts ignored all the documented evidence I provided them (such as custody court orders from Sweden, etcetera) and The Hague Treaty regarding Child Abduction.

In the end, they illegally ruled their custody order in favor of Ms. Liudmila Trafimovich without even bothering to legally notify me (they ignored the principles of services abroad under The Convention as well).

When you read through the details of how they justify their decisions, you will be horrified when you realize how far they can go with their abuse of common sense or even self-respect.

Besides everything, they have no problem breaching official mandatory notification protocols. For example, they would ask the Abductor to notify you directly (by herself, at some random restaurant where she asked me to come on the pretext of meeting with our children) the day before the hearing (on December 27, 2018).

I hope that you agree that you can’t make this up. And this is just a small example of what is considered completely normal in Belarus, including having the Abductor forge my signatures on some documents.

Of course, despite my loud protests, the Belarusian courts turned a blind eye to this. That is also normal in Belarus. They would go through dead bodies to make their point and prove that you mean nothing in their country and that they can rule whatever they want as long as they win. And so, ultimately, they also had no problem ignoring the Swedish custody court order issued in my favor (in my case, Sweden has the jurisdiction regarding The Hague Treaty) from September 10, 2018. However, the Belarusian court authorities neglected this, although they were made aware of it from the beginning.

To conclude, I have been facing a blatant denial of justice in Belarus from the beginning of my litigation. I have witnessed a grave violation and abuse of my children’s and my right to have a “FAIR” trial. 

In a nutshell, Belarus and its current judicial system are vehemently trying to justify and cover up the grave legal offense that Liudmila Trafimovich committed in the Kingdom of Sweden, which is part of the European Union. They are not even noticing such detail that Interpol is officially searching for my children. Apparently, Interpol also means nothing to them.

Nic. Cheropoulos

Sincerely, Nicolaos A.A. Cheropoulos
Father of Anthie’ and Alexandra
Stockholm, April 2020
Revised, Oct. 2023
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