Vietnam's hill tribe children "stolen" for adoption (Feature)
By Simon Parry Feb 23, 2010, 3:08 GMT
Hanoi - High among the jagged limestone peaks that mark Vietnam's border with Laos, Cao Thi Thu squats on the stone floor of her family's hut and pleads, 'Please help bring my daughters home.'
It is more than three years since officials came to Thu's village and offered her the chance to send her daughters - Cao Thi Lan, 3, and Cao Thi Luong, 8 - to be educated in the provincial capital. Instead, they were sold for adoption overseas.
Clutching the only photographs she has of the girls - shots ironically taken at the children's home to send out to prospective adoptive parents abroad - the pain of separation from her daughters is as sharp today as it was on the day she last saw them.