Posted: 18 October 2006 - From AP Via Yahoo! News
The biological father of Baby David - the 13-month-old boy adopted by Madonna - on Wednesday criticized human rights groups seeking to reverse the move and said his child should stay with the star.
The Human Rights Consultative Committee, a coalition of 67 organizations, launched a legal challenge Tuesday to the Malawian government decision to relax the usual ban on adoptions by foreigners and relax the requirement that prospective parents have to stay with the child for 18-24 months for assessment before the adoption is formalized.
'Where were these people when David was struggling in the orphanage? These so-called human rights groups should leave my baby alone,' Yohane Banda said.
'As father I have okayed this, I have no problem; the village has no problem, who are they to cause trouble? Please let them stop.'
Madonna and British film director husband Guy Ritchie Thursday spent eight days in Malawi and last Thursday signed adoption papers for Baby David. Banda, David's father, counter-signed the papers and High Court judge, Justice Andrew Nyirenda, issued the celebrity couple an 'interim order' okaying the couple to take the baby away 'with conditions.'
The boy was flown to London on Monday.
A government official said the laws being used by the civil rights groups to mount the challenge were 'archaic.'
Penston Kilembe, the Director of Child Welfare Services in the Ministry of Gender, child Welfare and Community Services, told The AP the laws the civil rights groups are using are 'archaic.'
'These laws date back to the 1940s; things have changed now,' he said. 'Madonna and her husband has broken no laws as far as government is concerned. They have followed all the legal steps.'
Kilembe said when approving the adoption of Baby David government looked at rights of the baby and the family and 'found nothing amiss.'
'These groups should fight for rights of children, not block the same like they are trying to do now,' he said.
The civil rights groups chairman, Justice Dzonzi, said they were not against the adoption, but wanted the laws followed. 'If Madonna really wants the child, she has to apply for residency permit in Malawi,' he said.
The star found David at the Home of Hope Orphanage, which looks after more than 500 children who have lost one or both parents.
Banda's wife, Marita, 28, died a week after giving birth to David. The couple, who had been married for over 10 years, had two other sons who died in infancy from malaria.
'I was alone with a baby; I had no money, I couldn't buy him milk, that's why I surrendered him to the orphanage,' said Banda.
'Orphanage life is no good. We leave kids there because we can't look after them properly ourselves. Now my son has been taken by a kindhearted woman, these people want to bring him back to the orphanage,' lamented Banda, standing in his small garden of onions and tomatoes.
The peasant farmer said Madonna and Ritchie promised him nothing apart from 'love and care for my David.'
Banda's village is typical of many in Malawi - no electricity or running water, and basic mud huts. Few inhabitants had even heard of Madonna before the controversy erupted.
'Whoever she is she is a kindhearted woman,' said Village Headman Lipunga, the chief of the village. 'We all love her here and we hope she will visit us soon.'


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If it was someone else this media harassment, attention would not have happened, David's father has spoken they should all just leave them alone now.

God could come down from the heavens and bless Madonna and her child:

the father can approve until he is blue in the face:

the entire continent of Africa and it's govt.'s can prove she legally adopted:

it would not make a difference. people who don't like her will find an excuse to try and crucify this woman each time she takes a breath.

Madonna did not all of a sudden become interested in adoption or conditions in Africa. nor is this the 1st time Madonna has ever supported or donated money to fight aids. and this bullshit about her adopting a "black" child regardless what country he's from is something a hypocrite and a racist would say. 1st "black children aren't wanted", then when a black child from AFRICA of all places (shock/horror) is adopted; and non the less by a woman who can give the child more than most people can dream of...then there's a problem with race. i'm sure 90% of the people complaining about Africa have never been there themselves. Europe, Africa, North America..who gives a fuck where the child is from! no child in one country is more deserving than another of a home, health care, an education, a family, and above all ...love.

No good deed goes unpunished
No act of charity goes unresented
No good deed goes unpunished
That's my new creed
My road of good intentions
Led where such roads always lead
No good deed
Goes unpunished!
One question haunts and hurts
Too much, too much to mention
Was I really seeking good
Or just seeking attention?
Is that all good deeds are
When looked at with an ice-cold eye?
If that's all good deeds are
Maybe that's the reason why
No good deed goes unpunished
All helpful urges should be circumvented
No good deed goes unpunished
Sure, I meant well -
Well, look at what well-meant did
All right, enough - so be it

No Good Deed from Wicked

ok, here I go-
Every single person that is part of the 67 coalition groups should put their money where their mouth is and adopt a couple kids that need a home and family...

And if I were Madonna I would tell them all to put their money where their mouth is and get off their arse and do something besides talk...maybe walk the walk!

I also can't help but wonder if all of the people that are members of the so called 67 group coalition have actually ever seen a starving or abused child? And if they have how could they NOT open their home and hearts to them.

I'm sorry people but sometimes I get so disgusted with people and their so called 'good intentions.'

ok, now I had my rant for the day..whew...have to go and change some more diapers...all four of my babies got sick with respiratory infections and pink eye and what do ya know but the antibiotics gave them the runs to boot!!!!!
[Edited 10/18/06 21:08pm]

People just dont know when to stop

I just read shes changing the boys name to Marvin.

Madonna's Critics Are So Wrong

POOR Madonna. Not words you often have to write about someone worth Pounds 248 million. But since the star decided to adopt a Malawian baby, she has come in for such furious criticism you'd think she was guilty of satanic child abuse instead of offering one needy little boy a good home. Well, several homes, actually.

And maybe that's the problem. There is something about the sight of a dauntingly rich Westerner plucking a heavenly infant out of a living hell that makes our well-fed stomachs a little queasy.

Isn't this just another spoilt A-lister flitting down the aisles of the global superstore and buying whatever she fancies - even children - in every colour? 'Honey, I'll take one of those in the brown. Don't bother to wrap him. I've got the jet outside.' The snatched TV news footage of 13-month-old David Banda in an airport corridor added to the worrying impression that this was more like celebrity kidnapping than adoption. Minded by a white nanny and a bodyguard, the blameless black baby had suddenly become big news.

He was the hottest orphan since Oliver Twist. One picture of him with his new mother would be worth enough to keep David's village in food and clean water for the rest of his life. A life which, incidentally, had just been extended by around 40 years as he travelled from sub-Saharan Africa to Madonna's Pounds 6 million London townhouse.

Even before the little boy landed in England yesterday, there were dire warnings from Westminster City Council, which said that Madonna would get no preferential treatment from the British adoption authorities. Authorities so strict that this country has among the lowest rates of overseas adoptions in the developed world.

(Part of the problem is that countries like Malawi insist, absurdly enough, that prospective parents live in the country for 18 months before even being considered for one of its million-plus orphans.) Meanwhile, a child dies in Africa every 30 seconds.

AND how many African children did Britain give safe haven to last year?

Five. Count them: five.

That pitiful figure may make our 'They're Better off in Mud Huts Than Mansions' brigade feel virtuous; it just makes me feel sad and ashamed.

It's an honourable idea that it's always preferable for a child to remain in its own culture, until you realise that David's two older brothers were killed by malaria in infancy.

His mother died, aged 28, on the day of his birth. So, yes, when they get rid of malaria, when they have a vaccination against HIV/ Aids which has felled 14 per cent of Malawi's 12 million people, when they improve living conditions to the point where new mothers don't die of postpartum infection every single day, then it would be absolutely wonderful for all African children to be raised by their own kind.

Meanwhile, spare me the soul-searching.

How dare people prefer conditions for an African child which they would hesitate to inflict on their own guinea pig? For David Banda, the likeliest outcome of staying in his culture was death before the age of 35. What child, given the option, would choose an early grave over a life of love and prosperity?

Madonna has found herself ensnared in the great tangle of guilt and superiority that make up our attitude to Africa. People may holler about a 'Cash for Babies' scandal when one small boy gets to bypass normal channels because his famous Mum has given Pounds 1.6 million to build a home for 4,000 Aids orphans. I don't see the front-page outrage over millions of other nameless Davids, put to adult work by the age of six, for whom there is no hope of cash.

'There's one law for the rich and one law for the poor,' grumble the cynics.

Yes, indeed there is. We fixate on the rich and we ignore the poor.

I don't pretend to fully understand Madonna's motives. But at least she will try to give David a good life.

WHO knows, in time, this boy raised by an iconic female may return to a continent that is desperately in need of global advocates. So yes, Madonna gets unfair advantages. But why should we object if her advantages - as she pointed out yesterday in her dignified statement - generate publicity and financial help for those whose daily lot is disadvantage, of a kind we can barely imagine?

Perhaps the last words, though, should go to baby David's father. Addressing those who feel his son should have stayed in Malawi, Yohane Banda told the Mail: 'I appeal to them to leave my baby alone.

Where were they when he didn't have milk when his mother died? Do they want him to go back to the orphanage?' If David's new life is good enough for his father, then it's good enough for me.

Source: Allison Pearson, International News Service, Australia

Link? Link? Was there a link posted?

Looks like Madonna wants to adopt a baby girl,too

PFunkjazz said:

She's a messager of GOD:

PFunkjazz said:

at the beginning of the article it says "From AP Via Yahoo! News". but I got the article at madonnalicious.