THE HAGUE - Sebastian Kruis, leader of the PVV party in The Hague in daily life, was at Schiphol a month ago, not knowing what the following weeks in Colombia would bring him. He went on a trip to the South American country to look for his biological family. And with success, less than two weeks later he found his biological mother in a shelter for the homeless elderly in Medellín. "I went from no information at all about my mother to a meeting with her in a matter of days."
The 32-year-old party leader was adopted at a young age by a couple from the Netherlands. 'When I was nine months old, I was adopted and came to the Netherlands. I grew up there in Zoetermeer and when I was eighteen I moved to The Hague, the most beautiful city in the Netherlands', Kruis begins in the radio program Menno in de Middag. 'I am now 32 years old and in all this time I really didn't feel the need to know more about my biological family and look for them.'
Until more than a year ago a report was published about abuses in international adoptions and the role of the Dutch government in this. 'There have been stories for some time that things have gone wrong with adoptions. But that research showed that things often did not go well with adoptions and that the government played a reprehensible role in this,' explains the PVV member. 'That made me, like many other adopted children, start to doubt whether my adoption file is correct and I really wanted to find out', says the politician.
Tour of Colombian population register and police
So Kruis put his money where his mouth is and he was standing at Schiphol on 22 April with a suitcase and ticket to Medellín in his hand. 'I mainly went to Colombia with the idea to see if I could get more information about my adoption file. I only had a name and a place of birth', he says.