Adopted children may have been stolen from Thailand
April 19, 2002 at 05:00, Updated: September 23, 2007 at 14:00
For three years in the mid-1970s, over 900 adoptive children to Sweden from Thailand. Many of the children were taken to an orphanage in Bangkok, where it later turned out to be kidnapped children. When police raided the orphanage in April 1977, three of the 33 children who lived there stolen from the poor.
Sawitri Börjesson, now 25 years old and the mother of two children in Norrköping, adopted from Thailand, months before the police raid. She has researched his background and tried to find the biological parents in Thailand. The people who are like mom and dad in the adoption documents say they have not left out any child. They have also done a DNA test showing that they can not be related to Sawitri Börjesson. Sawitri Börjesson believe that the Swedish authorities have a major responsibility for the adoptions of children with false identity documents could be executed. - My rights as a human being has been violated and Board for Intercountry Adoptions is ultimately responsible, she says. Sawitri Börjesson has filed a police report about his own adoption with another adoptee woman, 27-year-old Malinee Murray. A preliminary investigation of suspected kidnapping has been initiated in collaboration with the Thai justice system. Yet, no one has suspected of crimes, says chief prosecutor Solveig Wollstad. Both Sawitri Börjesson and Malinee Murray appeared in the documentary film "Children at any price" as of yesterday evening broadcast on Swedish television. While working on the movie found journalists Per Lapins and Erik Sandberg evidence that at least 18 children have come to Sweden under a false identity. Malinee Murray, who now lives in Gothenburg, was proof that her identity is not true since she Thailand came in contact with a woman who has the identity indicated in her actions. Previously it was thought that her background was invented - now she knows that it is stolen. Malinee Murray came to Sweden with the organization Adoption Center. She keeps them and the authorities responsible for ensuring that she will never be able to find their biological parents. - I feel betrayed. I think it is shameful that the Adoption Centre has deliberately turned a blind eye to the children had false identities, she says. Adoption Center says today that in the 1970s knew that some of the kids really had other mothers than those who were quoted in the papers. Adoption Center believed that the true mothers had left Bangkok or unwilling to recognize motherhood, says Information Officer Annika Grünewald. - In retrospect, I feel we did wrong. We did not realize the risks, she says. After the police raid in Bangkok in 1977 ended almost adoptions from Thailand to Sweden and the rules were tightened. then-president of the State Board for Intercountry Adoptions, Gradin said today that the agency was not aware of the abuses in Thailand before they were discovered by the Thai police. - People had to put a stop to this as soon as possible, says Anita Gradin. 99F 08-13 54 12, bjorn.malmstrom @ svd.se Björn Malmström
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