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SG-DOSSIERS-ACCES@ec.europa.eu

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Fri, Oct 7, 5:10 PM (19 hours ago)

to me

Hello,

Dennis de Jong

Tue, 12 Feb, 11:50

to me

Beste Roelie,

Zojuist uitgebreid met Selmayr gesproken. Ik zal hier verder geen ruchtbaarheid aan geven en verzoek jou hetzelfde te doen, maar het gesprek verliep boven verwachting goed.

Verschueren, drs. K. - BD/CBJ/JIZ

Attachments

7 Apr 2020, 09:14

to me

Geachte mevrouw Post,

Police start to interview witnesses following Guardian reports on adoptions to the Netherlands nearly 50 years ago

Police in Bangladesh have launched an investigation into historical allegations that children were adopted abroad without their parents’ consent, after a Guardian investigation into adoptions to the Netherlands in the 1970s.

Bangladesh special branch in Dhaka confirmed it had opened an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the adoption of a number of children between 1976 and 1979.

It is the first time police have investigated allegations that children were lured from mothers using a tactic known as the “boarding school scam”, where vulnerable families were offered temporary shelter for their children only to find they were adopted abroad without their consent.

Special Supt Tahsin Mashroof Hossain Mashfi told the Guardian: “Shedding light on the matter has ignited a deep sense of responsibility. We commit to conducting a fair and impartial investigation, striving to contribute meaningfully to the nation’s healing process.”

The city police arrested a 31-year-old D. Vani, of NGGO’s colony, for allegedly cheating a woman by promising her to arrange the legal adoption of a newborn baby here on Thursday.

According to the police, on December 20 last year, a 35-year-old woman from Kakinada was heading to Vizag along with her aunt on a bus. The purpose of her visit was to get treatment, since she was not blessed with babies despite 10 years of marriage. During her journey, the accused had boarded the bus at Annavaram and sat beside them.

After coming to know about the complainant’s problem, Ms. Vani promised to give a baby after completing legal procedures from the parents concerned. Ms. Vani had asked the complainant to come to King George Hospital (KGH) on December 24. At the hospital, the woman collected ₹80,000 from the victims and asked them to wait at a place, informing them that she would visit the Children’s Ward and come back. However, she did not return. After realising that she was cheated, the woman lodged a police complaint.

Pune, 27th January 2024: The sun was setting as young Kumari (name changed) settled down on her mat among other children to sleep at the Child Care Institution (aka child shelter) she had come to know as home over the years. Her story, though unique in its details, echoes the haunting refrain of many children within India’s shelters (https://www.punekarnews.in/indias-adoption-paradox-why-thousands-of-eager-familiescant-find-waiting-children/).

Orphaned early on, losing both of her parents to sickness, Kumari biological relatives were unable to look after her so her aunt Nalini (name changed) placed her in a child shelter. Kumar was shuffled from one shelter to another as she grew older. Emotionally, she became detached as she watched other children at the shelter come and go, some of them reunited with biological families and others celebrating their adoption by adoptive families. Eight years went by and nobody ever visited nor came for Kumari, leaving her to wonder if she was truly forgotten by everyone.

 “Almost every day, she’d ask if anyone was going to come for her. Her hopeful eyes searching for a family, a connection,” recalls a caretaker from the institution. Kumari was not placed in the legal adoption pool because she had relatives on paper, even if they never cared for her in real life.

 All over India, stories like Kumari’s reveal a silent, overlooked crisis. In a small village on the outskirts of Maharashtra, two sisters, aged 9 and 11 respectively, found themselves grappling with a heart-wrenching reality. Their laughter, once echoing through their family home, now resonates within the walls of a children’s shelter. Their mother, after the tragic demise of their father, found solace in another relationship and remarried. Hopes of a blended family were quickly shattered when their new stepfather showed no interest in integrating the girls into their new family. While their mother’s visits became sporadic at first, they soon ceased entirely. Days turned into weeks, weeks into months, and the shelter to a loving home, lack of clear laws around their gradual abandonment has kept them trapped in a system, unable to join the legal adoption pool, and thereby, kept away from the embrace of a family that might cherish and love them 

“People think shelters house only orphans, but the reality is many kids have families, who, though not strictly orphaned, are effectively abandoned. We see cases where families have left the children for care, and do not visit them but either do not want to surrender the child for adoption or are not aware of the fact that there is an option for these children to be adopted by waiting families. It leaves them in a heart-wrenching limbo,” says Protima Sharma, Co-founder and Director of Where Are India’s Children. 

Reader's letter: DR is currently uncovering a documentary about ten Indian, adult "Danes" who were adopted to well-intentioned, loving Danish adoptive parents without the knowledge that they were illegally robbed of their own biological parents in India. A corrupt and probably well-paid adoption center in India is behind the crime - certainly without the knowledge of the Danish adoptive parents.

I understand the frustrations of the Indians. They feel robbed of their Indian identity, their maybe-life in India, their association with biological parents and siblings. I just think the story lacks a little nuance and gratitude.

The Danish adoptive parents have given their adopted children a dignified, good, loving upbringing in a safe environment here in Denmark. They have been given the right conditions for a good life. The alternative in India has been extreme poverty without the possibility of either education or the possibility of just a tolerable existence in a huge country with so many poor people. I would think that the adoptees had to live with a red dot on their forehead as either belonging to a low caste or possibly casteless. A life of poverty and perpetual despair.

I understand the Indians' frustration; but I miss a certain form of saying thank you for, despite a forced adoption, that they have landed in happiness-land Denmark compared to India.

NAIROBI — When Leroy Blessing went missing, his family panicked. The autistic 9-year-old could not talk to strangers easily, and police in his native Kenya scoffed when his desperate parents sought help, saying he was old enough to look after himself.

“They said ‘he’s a big boy, he will come back home,’” Ketty Omondi, Leroy’s mother, recounted. “They never received me with kindness or pity.”

Then Maryana Munyendo stepped in. She heads Missing Child Kenya Foundation, an alliance of voluntary sleuths tracking down missing children. She plastered up posters and blasted social media. A stranger called two days later with the boy’s whereabouts.

Since setting up the group in 2016, Munyendo said she and her two-person team have reunited 1,055 children with their families out of the 1,551 missing children that parents have reported to her. Another 153 were sent to government homes and 28 were declared deceased, leaving 315 active files.

Munyendo, 41, set up the group after a 10-year-old girl went missing in the neighborhood near her office. Locals spotted the lost child after Munyendo put up posters, and the girl was reunited with her family after two days. More families reached out. Buoyed by early successes, Munyendo and her friend Jennifer Kaberi set up the foundation, running it on a shoestring out of Kaberi’s living room. Many of the children were runaways or the victims of parental abductions or traffickers. Some were simply lost and unable to tell strangers where they lived.They started with posters, social media and the introduction of online hashtags and the keywords “MissingChildKE” to bring up names and posters. Then the group expanded, setting up Kenya’s first toll-free number for tracing missing children and badgering local news organizations to air features on the missing.