After the 1976 coup, the military brutally crushed its opponents. At least 500 babies were taken from their captured parents and given to military couples to raise. Many still live unaware of their true identity

One autumn afternoon in 1983, paediatrician Jorge Meijide was called to an apartment in the small town of Acassuso, on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. His six-year-old patient turned out to have nothing more than a mild flu, but Meijide sensed that something else was wrong in the household.

The woman who claimed to be the child’s mother seemed to him too old to be his parent. On the walls hung photos of a man in military uniform: presumably the boy’s father.

In 1980s Argentina both details were more than suspect. The country was slowly returning to democracy after the “dirty war” waged by the military dictatorship under Jorge Videla, known as the “Hitler of the Pampa”. After the 1976 coup, Argentina’s military set about crushing any potential opposition and eventually 30,000 people were killed or disappeared, almost all of them civilians. Pregnant prisoners were kept alive until they gave birth and then murdered. At least 500 newborns were taken from their parents while in captivity and given to military couples to raise as their own.

Soldiers frisk a man at a checkpoint in Buenos Aires in 1977. The military dictatorship of 1976-1983 left about 30,000 people missing; Jorge Videla,, who led the military junta from 1976 until 1981. Photographs: Ali Burafi/AFP/Getty Images and Keystone/Getty Images

The case of four Croatian couples arrested in Zambia on suspicion of human trafficking through child adoptions from the Democratic Republic of the Congo has attracted the attention of European institutions, the Croatian Vecernji List daily reported on Monday.

The four married couples from Croatia were arrested at Ndola airport in Zambia in early December on suspicion of human trafficking, based on suspicious adoption documents issued in the neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo. They were released on bail after a court hearing last Thursday.

A statement by the European Commission on cross-border adoptions and the need for greater transparency and closer international cooperation in such cases has been included on the agenda of the plenary session of the European Parliament for February. Discussion was initiated by Croatian MEP Ladislav Ilcic, a member of the European Conservatives and Reformists group, who proposed adoption of a resolution on inter-country adoption.

“Adopting a child is a noble act, but in order to protect children and adoptive parents, we need to put an end to organised crime and patch up the gaps in the system that are used by criminals for child trafficking. That’s why I initiated this resolution, which has quickly received great support from MPs and leaders of political groups,” Ilcic told Vecernji List.

The resolution would call on EU member states to temporarily or permanently suspend child adoptions from DR Congo and other countries with the widespread practice of child trafficking until mechanisms have been established to prevent such practice and potential adoptive parents are provided with an efficient and verified adoption procedure.

Mary wanted to raise her three children, but they were all taken from her. She died before she got justice.

A WOMAN PLANS to take legal action against the State over her mother’s exclusion from the planned redress scheme for survivors of mother and baby institutions.

Evelyn*, who was born into the system, has criticised the fact survivors who participated in the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes (COIMBH) but died before the State apology in January 2021, will be excluded from the scheme.

She is currently in discussions with solicitors and said she will “take whatever legal action is necessary”.

Evelyn told The Journal that many women like her mother, who were not allowed to keep their children, died before they ever got justice.

Directing CARA to issue an NOC within 30 days to an NRI couple for adoption

of a child, the Delhi High Court in a ruling said the application being prior to

the coming into force of Adoption Regulations, 2022, the "adoption would not

be strictly required to be dealt with in the procedure prescribed in the said

Regulations."

In September 2019, a weeks-old baby girl was found badly hurt but -- miraculously -- alive in the rubble of a raid by U.S. special operations forces. The military had targeted a home in central Afghanistan, looking to capture or kill suspected foreign fighters associated with al-Qaida.

The baby was left orphaned. Both of her parents were killed in the operation and she was placed under the temporary medical care of the U.S. military to recover from burns and physical trauma.

Today, the 3-and-a-half year old, known as Baby Doe, is an orphan no longer. She is claimed by two families who are fighting a complex legal battle over the right to raise her.

On one side are her paternal uncle and cousins in Afghanistan, with whom she was placed by the Afghan government in early 2020. Her uncle's son and his wife, referred to in court as John and Jane Doe, cared for her for 18 months.

On the other side is a U.S. Marine lawyer who was in Afghanistan at the time of the raid and who successfully petitioned a local Virginia court to grant him an adoption order. An attorney for the Marine, Maj. Joshua Mast, has contended in court filings that the girl had no surviving biological relatives, which the U.S. government says isn't true.

Sirianna Arathi was left out of an important family meeting, one where a couple of her friends, their parents and partners decided she was part of their family – even though she isn't blood related.

"I feel so confident in just being like 'this is my family, these are my sisters, this is my older sister, this is my older brother,'" says Arathi, who takes pride in "owning that kind of chosen family identity without having to put that label of chosen family."

Arathi is originally from south India, but was adopted by a white family in the United States as a child.

She says her adoptive family expected her to be grateful for being "saved" and tried to control her by overmedicating her. She also said another family member abused her.

"I had this view of family that I should be not only completely loyal to the family that raised me, but that was it. That was family," she says.

On Tuesday, the Chilean lower house voted through a resolution regarding the thousands of suspected illegal adoptions from the country.

136 members voted for the resolution and only one member voted against.

The decision means that the left-wing president Gabriel Boric will establish a truth and reparations commission for internationally adopted and families of origin who have suffered from irregularities linked to adoptions from the 1950s until the turn of the millennium.

In a parliamentary inquiry from 2019, the Chilean lower house established that children had been stolen from their parents and adopted away to countries in the Western world – including to Sweden.

The investigation said that networks of social workers, judges, healthcare professionals and adoption agencies had acted in concert “with the aim of confiscating minors, especially if their mothers were in a vulnerable situation”.

PUNE: The state Woman and Child Development (WCD) department has reached out to Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) for information on at least 15 adoption cases cleared by district magistrates (DMs) on Tuesday and Wednesday.

The Bombay high court on Tuesday had stayed the implementation of the September 2022 notification that authorised district magistrates to oversee and decide about adoption cases. It directed that henceforth only a single-judge high court bench can hear adoption matters.

“Nearly 10 to 15 cases were cleared in two days by the magistrates in the state when the high court stayed the notification. In these cases, the adoptee parents and children may face legal issues in future and hence we have sought directions from CARA,” a senior WCD official told TOI on Thursday.

Eight cases were cleared by the district magistrate from Nagpur followed by the others, the official from the WCD department said.

The interim order also restrained the Centre and the adoption group of Maharashtra State Women’s Council from transferring any pending cases to district magistrates.

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Veröffentlicht: 12.01.2023

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A Zambian court has granted bail to eight Croatian nationals charged with child trafficking

NDOLA, Zambia -- A magistrate in Zambia on Thursday granted bail to eight Croatian nationals charged with child trafficking.

Magistrate David Makalicha in Ndola, in the mineral-rich Copperbelt province, said the eight should each pay 20,000 Kwacha (about $1,000) bail and surrender their passports to the court.

The eight were named as Damir Magic, 44, Nadica Magic, 45, Zoran Subosic, 52, Azra Imamovic Subosic, 41, Ladislav Persic, 42, Aleksandra Persic, 40, Noah Kraljevic, 45, and Ivona Kraljevic, 46, when they first appeared in court on Tuesday and pleaded not guilty to charges of child trafficking.

They are defended by a legal aid lawyer, Kelvin Silwimba. In the charges brought before the court, the Croatians are accused of attempting to traffic four named children late last year into Zambia “for the purpose of exploitation.”