MADONNA URGES ADOPTION CRITICS TO VISIT AFRICAN 'DEATH CAMPS'

Last updated: Thursday, October 26, 2006

MADONNA URGES ADOPTION CRITICS TO VISIT AFRICAN 'DEATH CAMPS'

MADONNA has urged the activists and newspaper editors criticising her for adopting a Malawian baby to visit the Africa she saw and not want to bring a child home with them.

Madonna leaving her gym. London, England - 18.10.06.

Scenes of poverty in Malawi where Madonna visited. Blantyre, Malawi - October 2006

The pop star spoke out for the first time since her recent adoption controversy on yesterday's (25OCT06) OPRAH show in America, and revealed she's "disappointed' by the backlash she's received for giving 13-month-old DAVID BANDA "a better life".

Publications and adoption experts have attacked the singer for using her wealth and fame to speed up the adoption process, but Madonna told OPRAH WINFREY via satellite from London that she abided by all of Malawi's adoption rituals, insisting her fame and fortune accounted for nothing.

She explained, "There is a customary law, a tribal law, that if you adopt a child you have to get permission from some living member of the extended family.

"If both of the parents are deceased you have to go to an aunt or a grandparent or a distant cousin and they have to give both an oral and a written consent, saying that they agree to this adoption.

"I was told that his (David) mother had died of HIV and his three siblings had died of HIV; they didn't know where the father was or his history of his whereabouts, but once I was interested in him (David) and I spoke to the minister of Children And Mother's Welfare who said to me, 'Well, it is possible that you adopt this child, even if the father is not known to be deceased but we have to find the father and he has to give his consent.'"

The authorities tracked David's father YOHANE down and he gave his written and oral consent for Madonna and her husband GUY RITCHIE to legally adopt his son in court.

During her interview with Oprah, Madonna challenged anyone who is critical of her actions to walk in her footsteps and not want to do something positive about the struggling orphans in Africa.

She added, "I beg all of those people to go to Africa and see what I saw and walk through those villages and see the death camps.

"To see eight-year-olds in charge of households, to see mothers dying with Karposi's sarcoma lesions all over their bodies, to see open sewages everywhere... It is a state of emergency and, as far as I'm concerned, the adoption laws have to be changed to suit that state of emergency.

"I think if everybody went there they'd want to bring one of those children home with them and give them a better life."

Source: WENN

| Thursday, October 26, 2006

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MADONNA URGES ADOPTION CRITICS TO VISIT AFRICAN 'DEATH CAMPS'

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