CHILD SNATCHERS Inside the ‘abduction to order’ rings ‘blamed for snatching’ Maddie McCann where ‘attractive British children can fetch more than £10,000’

Around 1.2 million children are trafficked globally every year

NEW Netflix documentary The Disappearance of Madeleine McCann has suggested the missing girl - who would now be 15 - may still be alive.

It's been suggested by the McCanns' private investigator, Julian Peribanez, that Maddie - who was just three when she vanished on holiday in Portugal - could have been 'abducted to order' by a child trafficking gang.

It may sound far-fetched, but if Peribanez's claims are accurate, Maddie could be a victim of a sick global trade known as ‘child laundering’ - in which children are sold into the sex trade, illegally adopted or even killed for their organs.

Het aantal adopties uit het buitenland loopt gestaag terug

SAMENLEVING

Barbara Vollebregt– 2:59, 18 maart 2019

© Getty Images

Het aantal adoptiekinderen uit het buitenland dat in Nederland een thuis vindt, is in een paar jaar gehalveerd en blijft dalen. Net als het aantal wensouders.

Amy wants to cancel her adoption. At the age of ten, the Ethiopian Tigist, as she is still called, is adopted by a Danish family. Girl in Return follows Amy from the age of fourteen to her eighteenth and shows her struggle with the Danish and Ethiopian authorities. Director Katrine Kjaer previously made a documentary about the dark side of adoption, Mercy Mercy (2012). Unlike her younger sister who also moved house, Amy is unable to settle in her new family. The situation becomes untenable and she ends up in a foster home. The bond with her foster mother is loving and she has nice friends, but Amy cannot get used to Danish culture. A deep longing for and intense sorrow for the lack of her family, language and culture in Ethiopia dominate her life. She makes a trip to the country to visit her biological mother and other family members, but there too it is noticeable that there are major cultural differences. With this film, Kjaer shows the personal consequences of the international adoption system.

Dutch:

Amy wil haar adoptie ongedaan maken. Op tienjarige leeftijd wordt de Ethiopische Tigist, zoals ze dan nog heet, geadopteerd door een Deense familie. Girl in Return volgt Amy van haar veertiende tot haar achttiende en toont haar strijd met de Deense en Ethiopische autoriteiten. Regisseur Katrine Kjaer maakte eerder al een documentaire over de schaduwkant van adoptie, Mercy Mercy (2012). Anders dan haar jongere zusje die ook mee is verhuisd, lukt het Amy niet om te aarden in haar nieuwe gezin. De situatie wordt onhoudbaar en ze komt in een pleeggezin terecht. De band met haar pleegmoeder is liefdevol en ze heeft leuke vriendinnen, maar toch kan Amy niet wennen aan de Deense cultuur. Een diep verlangen naar en intens verdriet om het gemis van haar familie, taal en de cultuur in Ethiopië beheersen haar leven. Ze maakt een reis naar het land om haar biologische moeder en andere familieleden op te zoeken, maar ook daar is merkbaar dat er grote cultuurverschillen zijn. Kjaer laat met deze film de persoonlijke consequenties van het internationale adoptiesysteem zien.

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Her previous film about adopted Ethiopian children caused a lot of commotion in her own country. In Mercy Mercy (2012), Danish filmmaker Katrine Rijs Kjær provided insight into how an adoption can go completely wrong. With only victims: Masho's biological parents in Africa, her Scandinavian adoptive parents and the orphaned girl herself, who eventually became entangled in youth care. Kjær herself also came under fire: should she not have intervened?

A few years later there is now a sort of sequel, Girl In Return (55 min.).

Another girl, the same song: it does not clash with adoptive parents, contrary to all agreements, contact with biological parents has been rigorously broken and this child is also in danger of becoming a plaything for social workers and the associated authorities. She is just a little older and already puberty. The adopted child in question is called Amy Rebecca Steen. At least, that's the name she got from her adoptive family. Her real name is Tigist Anteneh. And she is trapped between her biological, adoptive and foster parents.

Her story is utterly sad: she came to Denmark with her sister at the age of ten, was placed out of the house just two years later, ended up in a foster home and taken away again. She is now back with foster mother Hanne, with whom she seems to have a warm bond, but her adoptive parents who have official custody are bothering. Do you still get it? And could the girl herself, longing back to Ethiopia and her biological mother and sister, understand it? In the meantime, her younger sister Buzayo is still in the adoptive family (and not in this film).

Kjær follows Amy / Tigist from the age of fourteen to eighteen and also films her biological family in Addis Ababa, who continues to attract her. Whereas in Mercy Mercy she still claimed a role as omniscient narrator, the documentary maker in this again very poignant film remains completely out of the picture. Every now and then she only asks the orphaned girl a question, who now wonders whether the adoption can be reversed. However, the Danish authorities do not allow her to travel to Ethiopia to re-establish bond with her family. It is a hopelessly stalemate. Who feels called or forced to break it?

Bangladeshi authorities have arrested a senior member of football's world governing body Fifa for allegedly defaming the country's prime minister.

Mahfuza Akhter Kiron, a Fifa Council member, was detained after she had said that Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was neglecting football.

A defamation claim was then filed by a local sport official, alleging that the comments embarrassed the entire nation.

On Saturday, Ms Kiron was denied bail and sent to jail, her lawyer said.

"We sought bail for her after she was taken to the court. But our prayer was rejected," her lawyer Liakat Hossain said.

MARCH 16, 2019: [College admission][Capital punishment][European Union]

ARCHIVE / 2019 / APRIL< Previous Article | Next Article >

LETTER FROM GUATEMALA — From the April 2019 issue

Destined for Export

The troubled legacy of Guatemalan adoptions

When she was growing up in Downingtown, Stefanie Beard wondered if she might someday locate a blood relative in China, from where she was adopted as a baby.

But she never expected to find one in this country — much less one living 12 miles away.

That’s what happened when Beard, 21, a Temple University junior, submitted a DNA sample to 23andMe. The California-based genetics company soon alerted her to the existence of a biological cousin, Claire Mitchell, a 20-year-old Bryn Mawr College sophomore who also was adopted from China.

“Both of our minds are blown,” Beard said.

The women soon realized they came not just from the same southern Chinese province, but from the same small town, and in fact from the same orphanage, the Huazhou Social Welfare Institution.

Gunther Krichbaum's ex-wife is said to testify in the process of slander as a witness

Enzkreis / Pforzheim. Once again yesterday, no judgment was made before the district court Pforzheim. As reported, defend there Oana Krichbaum, lawyer and CDU municipal candidate in Pforzheim, and her husband, CDU member of parliament Gunther Krichbaum, against the public statements of a 46-year-old from the Enzkreis. The Germans with Romanian roots are accused of libel and slander against public figures.

In her statements, the accused referred, inter alia, to information that she wants to have received in 2011, partly directly and partly over others from Gunther Krichbaum's ex-wife. In 2017, however, she had denied ever talking to the defendant or asking for information. Now she is to be heard as a witness. Until the next hearing on April 17, judges, public prosecutors and defense attorneys will also have to read hundreds of pages of Facebook posts along with other documents.

Read more on Saturday, March 16, in the "Pforzheimer Zeitung" or in the e-paper on PZ-news or on the apps on iPhone / iPad and Android smartphones / tablet PCs.

German:

"I am a giveaway." About the consequences of an adoption

Last summer, writer and poet Eke Mannink published her debut novel "This is how I get over you," about the consequences of an adoption. Her own, that is. The intention was to put an end to a long story, it was a new beginning.

First I came - from a children's home in Nijmegen. About a year later, my brother Robert - from the Roman Catholic transit house Moederheil in Breda - arrived. Not my biological brother. Together we grew up with the parents who adopted us, on the edge of a village in the Veluwe.

New story

I wrote a novel about my adoption. I had never realized how many consequences that would have, until now, now that I am on the train and on my way to my brother's biological mother. If I had not written my book, I would never make this trip. Then I would not have known that my brother had become a father and got to know his real mother. I would not even have known that he is no longer alive. I had thought: I will make a point with this book. But it turned out to be the start of a new story.

2Doc: Girl in return

Imagine that as a child, you cannot ground in your adoptive family. What are your rights?

2Doc: Girl in Return shows the personal consequences of the current international adoption system through the eyes of Amy, an adopted teenage girl.

2Doc: Girl in return

Wednesday 13 March at 20.55 on NPO2