Demonstration for subsidy of searches for biological parents

Translated from Dutch

Demonstration for subsidy of searches for biological parents

Politics & Economy T5 July 2018

Parts:

Dozens of adoptees from, among others, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Colombia and India today demonstrate in The Hague for financial support in the search for their biological parents. Recently, it emerged that many children from these countries were illegally adopted in the 1970s and 80s and that the Dutch government was looking away.

Because the adoption papers are often false, the chances are very small that adoptees can find their biological parents. This also applies to Dewi Deijle, she is adopted from Indonesia: "I started my search in 2010", says Deijle. "When I arrived at the home where I used to be, they told me that my papers were not correct." Because Deijle could not quite believe that her adoption would have been illegal, she went looking for the addresses she found in the documents. "That too turned out to be a dead end."

Eventually Deijle went to the clinic where she was born. "It turned out to be completely wrong. In the clinic they told me that during that time adoptions like mine were the order of the day. Here, too, they could not help me any further. "At the moment Deijle has no clues and the track to her biological family seems to have run aground.

Pot for funding searches

The story of Deijle is not a unique story and that is what the Thursday demonstration is about. If the government makes more money available, this type of search can be successfully completed more often. "We would like to get an apology from the government about the fact that they knew about the adoptions, but did not do anything about it," says Deijle. "We also want a pot of money from which we can fund searches for biological parents."