Whose children are they, anyway?

Annie and Christer were moving to India in a few short months. Rather than enroll their only child in the Swedish public school, only to be interrupted in the middle of the school session due to the impending move, the couple decided to await their arrival in India and enroll Domenic in school there.  He was just 7 years old. However, the Gotland Social Services of Sweden would have it their way, even while home schooling was a legal option in Sweden at that time, and still is at the time of this writing.

In a June 2009 published article regarding the Johansson matter, chair of Sweden's department of Children and Education Lena Celion made it perfectly clear that Annie and Christer's parental right to manage the education of their child was not to be granted. Instead, Celion said it is Domenic's right to be enrolled in school, and the municipality is exercising its duty by forcing the family to enroll the boy, even though the family clearly communicated their intentions to leave the country. Whose child is Domenic? Is he the child of Annie and Christer Johansson, or is he the child of Gotland Municipality?

Celion said, "It's his right. We are doing this for the boy's sake." For "the boy's sake" Swedish social services ripped a happy, healthy and cherished child from the arms of loving parents. Why? To force him to sit daily in a building behind a desk in a Swedish school when just a few short months later he would have been doing the very same thing in Indian public schools, less the trauma caused by what has been almost an entire year separated from his parents. With rights like these, we think children would be better off with no rights at all!