“Imagine you’re a 16-year-old going about your day […] when suddenly soldiers armed with machine guns wearing balaclavas to mask their faces burst into your home,…They force you into your vehicle and drive you away in an unknown direction, and you find yourself stuck for months in a nightmare, with a different name.”
That statement was made by Annalena Baerbock, President of the UN General Assembly. Ukraine’s Deputy Foreign Minister Mariana Betsa said at the UN that amid Russia’s war of aggression, children have been killed, injured, raped, separated from their families, and deported. She added, “It is unimaginable that someone could view children as war trophies,” she said, adding that at least 20,000 Ukrainian children have been deported to Russia. “Not a single child should be separated from their family.”
The General Assembly has demanded that Russia release all Ukrainian children, but the Russian government dismisses the resolution as political. The response to Russia’s dismissal of the advocacy for displaced Ukrainian children? Mariana Betsa said that the condemnation of Russia’s practice of detaining and deporting Ukrainian children is “not about politics, it is about humanity.”
The Queer God Squad’s work is rooted in Queer Religious Activism, but we care about all who are wrongly harmed and treated unjustly. Having had to fight for our rights and security, we stand with and for the marginalized all over the world. We pray for Ukrainian families to be reunited, for there to be a just peace in Eastern Europe, and for the U.S. to also halt practices of separating families and deporting people who pose no threat to our nation.
