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28 April 2004, Gold Coast, Australia -- Despite numerous requests, U.S. Representative
Jan Schakowsky ignores appeals to remove incorrect information from her official
http://www.house.gov website, promoting
a new legislation which she co-sponsored. Elena Petrova, who found herself pictured as the organizer of opposition to U.S. law, has been sending requests to remove the oblivious accusations from the Internet since March 31, 2004, to no avail. Elena, who is an Australian resident, has commented on the proposed U.S. legislation on International Marriage Brokers in a series of articles and interviews in August-September 2003, when the proposed Bill was offered for a review. Imagine her surprise when in March 2004 she was pointed out to an article that named her as the organizer of a petition opposing the proposed U.S. law that would regulate online services! (The article can be found at: http://www.house.gov/schakowsky/article_1_07_04_marriage_trap.html) "I was truly shocked!" - says Elena, "The article on the website of Jan Schakowsky made me look like some kind of a slave trader, who only wants to lure her victims into the hands of abusive men! I am quite the opposite. I was always a supporter of the idea of better protection for women-immigrants. I want foreign women to be safe in their new countries - I really do, since I am a "foreign wife" myself, and I know what challenges every woman faces when moving to a strange country. "Portraying me as somebody who organizes an opposition to a U.S. law is absurd - why would I do it, it will not affect me? It must be an ignorant mistake of the author of the article. I never organized any opposition to the proposed law. I merely commented on it when I was asked for my professional opinion. Since I am not in the USA and the proposed legislation will not directly affect my business, my opinion is unbiased, and many people contacted me asking what I think about the International Marriage Brokers Bill. This is how I happened to be involved in the discussion. "The author of the article on the website of the U.S. Representative Jan Schakowsky never contacted me personally. The information in the article identifies me by my name and the name of my website but it attributes to me things which I have never done or said, and which I consider as defamatory. I find it extremely distressing to be portrayed as somebody who opposes the law or protection of women-immigrants. Even more disturbing is the fact that the article advocates the view of international matchmaking industry as a form of human trafficking and sexual slavery. "The international matchmaking industry is designed to allow people to search beyond the national borders. International matchmakers are concerned about the success of their clients and their rights not any less than lawmakers. International marriages are not a form of human trafficking but the sign of globalization. The number of such marriages will certainly increase in the future, and portraying the international matchmaking industry as some kind of evil appears peculiar for any open-minded person. "The article on the website of Jan Schakowsky said that I had 'launched a petition in St. Petersburg, Russia, to oppose the proposed U.S. law that would regulate online services'. I never organized any petitions. I think the author of the article was talking about the petition that was started by a U.S.-based agency, and was signed by more than 2,000 Russian women using services of international matchmakers. The petition said that it supported the law but criticized the proposed procedure of background checks as unfeasible. "Further, the article stated that I said that 'the process of obtaining a man's criminal and marital history and then translating it into Russian would be too time consuming and expensive'. It is not exactly what I said; I said that the expensiveness and poor logistics of the proposed procedure would make U.S.-based services unable to compete with their overseas counterparts, in a very competitive industry, which will effectively force the U.S.-based services out of business. Certainly, this changes the sense of what was really said. "I consider the factual mistakes in the article as significant and defamatory in nature, and the worst is that this information is published on the official government website. A few people will question the correctness of the information on http://www.state.gov website, and this makes this slander virtually indestructible - in a-la Mark Twain manner. "I have sent dozens of letters through the email form provided on the website, fax, and air mail. I never received any response, except the automatic email autoresponders acknowledging my mail. The first letter was sent March 31, 2004. "I find it particularly disheartening to see such little care for the truthfulness of the information on the official website from the member of House Democratic Leadership team. The question is, how good is the legislation itself, if it needs lies to promote it? "I hope the issue will be resolved soon, but since I didn't have any responses to my complaints, nor the article in question was removed or corrected, I had to publish this disclaimer." Elena Petrova is well known in the Russian dating industry by her website Russian Brides Cyber Guide (http://www.womenrussia.com), which was founded in 1999 and became the first website about Russian women designed by a Russian woman. In March 2004 Elena started a campaign to promote a new image of Russian women seeking marriage abroad, supported by a number of other Russian women-website owners: in opposition to the current image of Russian women portrayed by media as submissive, serving and sacrificing, Russian Brides Cyber Guide offers the image of Russian women as intelligent, educated and smart, who seek suitable partners and not immigration by any means. |
 Elena Petrova found herself pictured as the organizer of opposition to the USA law, which she actually supported
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