Tanya Kozyro, 16, a schoolgirl from the city of Borisov, has asked for political shelter during her rest in the US under the program of Chernobyl Children’s Project. Tatiana has been visiting California for 9 years and staying at same family – that’s Debore and Manuel Zapato. This time she just refused to come back home to Byelorussia.  

Tatiana’s parents have been unparented for long: mother abandoned her when she was a baby, while her father is an alcoholic and a drug addict. Her grandmother was appointed her tutor. Tanya explained to American journalists that much as she loves her granny, she does not want to get back where father’s friends constantly visit their house bringing drugs with them.  

Nadejda Novik, the grandmother and tutor, has supported her grandchild. She said the girl began to call Debora and Manuel mummy and daddy on the very first visit when she was seven. Tanya considers the three children of the Zapato family to be her brothers and sisters. However, the state, as it has been several times before about Byelorussian children, has decided it knows better where Tanya should live.  

The diplomats from the Byelorussian foreign ministry have begun to act promptly in two directions. In Borisov they threatened the grandmother with deprivation of the tutor’s rights and sending Tanya to an orphan house. And in California, on the contrary, Tanya was promised “carrot”. At the beginning of the week she was visited by Pavel Shidlovsky, a special commissions ambassador. The Zapatos, however, had managed to do what any American would have done – they had found a lawyer for Tatiana. And Mr. Shidlovsky had to have talks not with the girl, but with the lawyer Christopher Keroski.         

The ambassador promised that in case Tania returns to Byelorussia the state would repair the old house they live in with her granny and the state would pay for her study. Besides, for some reason it was promised to give her a police protection. In case she did not come back it was threatened that the talks would be continued on the governmental level and then she would be deported.

Tania refused coming back. The Department of State took a decision that Tania may stay in America with Zapato family till 25 December (that’s when her tourist visa expires), while the US authorities would consider her request for immigration.  
Byelorussia has also done the first step to passing the talks to the governmental level. The humanitarian activities division at the President’s Affairs Department has stated that Belarus has suspended the health improvement programs for Byelorussian children in the US in relation to “illegal detaining of the Byelorussian citizen Tatiana Kozyro on the territory of the United States”.