Guatemala’s baby brokers: how thousands of children were stolen for adoption – podcast

From the 1960s, baby brokers persuaded often Indigenous Mayan women to give up newborns while kidnappers ‘disappeared’ babies. Now, international adoption is being called out as a way of covering up war crimes. By Rachel Nolan

Meeting Ministry of Justice and FIOM
At the office of SAV
3 June 2019

On WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook and soon also with their own websites, Chinese adoptees find each other. Dutch initiatives that may soon be active worldwide. To help each other in the search for identity and roots, or just for some recognition and fun.

This is the vision of Sien Alting Siberg (25) and Kya Jonker (23). Sien works at Fiom as a specialist care worker and Kya will graduate this year as a social worker. They have set up an international Facebook group for Chinese adoptees: The WAI Society. The World Adoptees Interpersonal Development Society focuses on personal development, root questions and the search for biological family. Because Sien was reunited with her biological family in 2015 and Kya is still busy with her search process, the two ladies can shed light on different phases with their experience.

In addition, Adoptiepedia was founded, initially only available on Instagram. Soon also as a foundation with a website. And indeed, think of Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia, but then specifically for adoptees from China and with reliable information. "Because we are different from adoptees from other countries. And because we are different from other (read: non-adopted) Chinese in the Netherlands", says Nikwi Hoogland (25), one of the initiators. Together with Simone Hanssen (28) and Hong-Lin Stoffels (20), she created Adoptiepedia. The team has since been expanded with Yennah Schenk (20) and Miu Buenen (19). They hope to have the website up and running within six months. "At the moment it is still specifically focused on China, because of our backgrounds", says Nikwi. "Within a year we want to expand further and also serve other countries. Perhaps worldwide. The website is being worked on hard, that takes time. This is a voluntary initiative of Dutch Chinese adoptees. It has been developed with great care.”

Same history

Newgein/Weert -

Amanda Janssen, adopted as a baby from Sri Lanka, had a carefree childhood in a family in Weert. The shock was great when she discovered that her birth certificate was false and that her sister who came along was not a family member. She now heads a foundation that uses DNA kits to help other adopted children find their biological family. She herself is still searching in vain.

Today at 18:45 Roel Wiche

How old are you actually? When Amanda Janssen is asked that question, it is always an awkward moment. The only thing she knows for sure is that she was adopted from Sri Lanka to a family in Weert in February 1985. But every other trail to her origins has so far been a dead end: her identity papers turned out to be false, just like those of thousands of other children who were adopted at the time. "I don't know my roots, but I do exist. That makes it very complicated. As if the ground is disappearing beneath your feet. Who am I?"

Let's keep her age at 39, says Amanda, as she extinguishes the oriental incense sticks in her apartment in Nieuwegein and serves coffee on the balcony. Her ruby-red, authentic Sri Lankan dress sparkles in the sunlight. She tells her story at a time when adoption is all over the news: the Netherlands has immediately imposed a stop because the Lower House fears a repeat of past abuses. In Sri Lanka in particular, there was large-scale adoption fraud. The documents of no fewer than 2,300 of the 3,500 adopted children who came to our country were allegedly forged, revealed the TV programme Zembla a few years ago.

A-Buddy is a subsidiary of Adoption Support Center, supported by volunteers and managed by thecoordinator. Adult adoptees are trained to provide a listening ear to othersadoptees. This volunteer organization also organizes activities and shares storiesadoptees via the website and social media.a-Buddy wants to be a place where adult adoptees (both the buddies themselves and the callers) feel at homewhere they find the recognition and understanding they lack elsewhere.a-Buddy is currently looking for a coordinator to temporarily replace the current coordinator.

The Jabalpur bench of Madhya Pradesh High Court last week quashed an FIR against christian missionary Dr. Ajai Lall accused of trafficking two children, who were earlier living in an orphanage run by a society of which he was the office bearer, and who were subsequently adopted following a family court order in 2017. In doing so the High Court noted that the adoption of the children was...

Indonesian syndicate allegedly bought and sold babies on Facebook

Police in Indonesia busted a baby-trafficking ring that bought newborns on Facebook and sold them to foreigners in Bali.

Police said the “well-organised” syndicate operated in Depok city of West Java, about 27km from capital Jakarta.

The infants were bought from parents for less than £800 on Facebook and sold to foreigners in Bali at four times the price, police said, adding the traffickers also worked on “pre-orders”.

As an American citizen and adoptee, I know firsthand how the values and promises of America have made life exponentially better for those who were not born on these shores.

Twenty years ago, a single mother in a developing nation made a heartbreaking decision. I know very little about her, except that she desperately wanted to give me, her child, a better life – and that she knew in her heart of hearts that she couldn’t do it herself.

She sent me to an orphanage, believing as she gave me away that somewhere, in an uncertain future she knew nothing about, there would be the opportunity for me to grow up safe and happy and free, even if that future never involved her again. That dream was worth giving up her child, and hoping against hope that I could succeed in a world she simply couldn’t get me to.

As she no doubt predicted, she never did see me again. Yet I never write about this issue without thinking about my birth mother.

Two decades after we saw each other for the last time, I have two amazing parents and a job advancing the financial freedom and mobility of everyday Americans. I am more self-realized than I ever imagined.

Police in Guatemala raided five regional offices of British aid agency Save the Children on Monday as part of an investigation into alleged child abuse.

Prosecutors requested information from US authorities in April about the alleged involvement of the organisation in smuggling children across the border, according to local media.

Save the Children said it was "aware of the activity" at their offices, and denied the prosecutors' allegations.

The prosecutor in charge of the case, Rafael Curruchiche, and the country's attorney general, Consuelo Porras, have previously been sanctioned by the United States and the European Union for attacks on democracy.

Curruchiche said the searches were being carried out in different regions of the country as part of a "transnational investigation of great importance", in a video statement on X.

From the 1970s onwards, Swiss couples adopted thousands of children from countries in the global south. Triggered by the first critical historical studies and demands from adopted people, the federal government and cantons have begun to examine international adoptions in recent years.

How did parents end up separating from their children? Who brought the children to Switzerland and how did they get there? How did the admission and adoption decisions come about? How did people who did not know each other become a family in Switzerland? And how do adopted people today deal with their biographies, what they know and what they do not know?

Panel discussion with Sabine Bitter, Andrea Abraham, Celin Sithy Fässler and Rita Kesselring (moderator)

venue

Das Gleis, Zollstrasse 121, 8005 Zurich