Czech man takes son out of Japan in suspected child abduction+

TOKYO, Nov. 7 Kyodo -
A Czech man has taken his 5-year-old son apparently to a place overseas from
his home in Gifu Prefecture, prompting the boy's Japanese mother to seek help
from the Foreign Ministry in searching for the boy's whereabouts, sources close
to the matter said Saturday.

The ministry, however, has few means in dealing with the case as Japan is not a
party to the 1980 Hague Convention that standardizes laws that prevent
international parental child abduction, they said.
Japan remaining a non-signatory has drawn international criticism recently
after an American father who tried to take back his two children from his
Japanese wife was arrested on suspicion of child abduction in Fukuoka
Prefecture in September.
The children might have been handed over to the father's side if Japan were the
member of the convention, which stipulates that children should be returned to
the original residing place when they are taken forcibly. The mother was
reported by some American media to have unlawfully taken the children first
from the United States.
While such cases of Japanese women taking their children to Japan after
divorcing or separating from their non-Japanese husbands or partners are often
reported and cause problems, cases in which children are taken out of Japan
have been relatively rare.
In the latest case, Kayoko Yamada, a 40-year-old resident of the city of
Yamagata, Gifu, sought help from the Foreign Ministry after her husband, a
31-year-old Czech Republic national, left home with their son on Aug. 23,
according to the sources.
Yamada received a phone call the following day from the husband, saying he and
the son were in Frankfurt, Germany. She has received no contact since then, and
assumes they are probably in the Czech Republic, the sources said.
Yamada and her husband have been living in Japan but recently were talking
about divorce.
Experts say Japan could seek help from Czech authorities in search of the
whereabouts of Yamada's son if Japan were a member of the convention.
With the annual number of international marriages rising by almost six times
over the last 30 years to some 37,000 in Japan last year as a government report
indicates, divorce and such related problems have been on the rise as well.
The number of children taken by Japanese parents from the United States,
Britain, France and Canada to Japan totaled over 160 as of this May, and some
cases involve those wanted on abduction charges.
==Kyodo
2009-11-07 22:32:45