I am a Chinese International Transracial Adoptee. I reunited with my biological family five years ago. Five years ago already, and going on six years soon. Some days it still feels surreal and other days it feels like I have always known them. 

Six years ago, if you asked me when my birthday was, I would have said December 5, with an uncomfortable feeling and painful reminder of my unknown past. Now, I answer the same question with a pause of whether or not to share my birthday is July 16. If you asked me six years ago how many siblings I have, I would have said half the number I have now. 

 As a child, and even in my teenage years, I was told and convinced that if I was still in China I probably would not have made it through school. I would not have the same opportunities if I still lived there. I might have been hidden or, even yet, maybe not alive. I would not have had the medical care I needed. Being deaf, I would be rejected by society. I would have been poor because my family was assumed to be poor and would not have a “successful” or “happy” life. I wrestled with this supposed “truth” and “luck” I had over the years.

The wonders and beliefs continuously changed through different seasons of life. Sometimes, I could only hold anger because there was no other identifiable feeling. I often became numb and would find myself assimilating to the beliefs around me: “lucky”, “chosen”, “thankful”, “grateful”, and “God’s plan” even when I did not feel like those comments were true. Other seasons, I missed, grieved, and carried the weight of the ambiguous losses alone. 

The experience of the unknown often leaves uncertainty, anxiousness, fear, and confusion. As a child, the unknown was not concrete. The differing answers about my birth parents and my past were what I had to make sense of why I was here. My understanding of my past was based on many different theoretical situations and imaginary scenarios of what possibly happened and a few documents with almost no information. Not even my birthday or finding spot was known to be exactly correct.

Union of India today submitted a set of suggestions before the Supreme Court in a plea seeking directions to make adoption procedures simple, and superfluous.

ASG Aishwarya Bhati informed the bench that as pert experts from the field once a child came under the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA), there was no delay in their adoption.

"Its the identification that takes time..so we can direct the nodal departments to carry out an identification drive every 3-4 months", ASG Bhati added.

A bench of CJI Chandrachud with Justices Pardiwala and Manoj Misra was further told that a positive step of foster adoption has been started by CARA.

More than 50 years have passed since Glen Rattenbury’s baby was taken away from her at birth but that memory is “as clear as day”.

“I didn’t even get to see him after a 35-hour labour,” she said. “I could hear the nurses saying, ‘No, that one is earmarked for adoption.’ And they took him away.”

She was heartbroken.

“They put a form in front of me – I was still under the effects of morphine – and they asked me to sign him away.

“For years, I remember looking into prams and thinking, ‘That could be my baby.’ Even though I knew he would’ve grown.”

The case of the Croatian couples accused of trafficking children from DR Congo became a hot topic in the Croatian media, but the Municipal Court in Zlatar, which has a bizarre verdict in its archives, also brought it into focus.

Mrs. Nataly Anderson was left without her children, who were kidnapped by her ex-husband, also a former SOA employee, Zvonimir Marinović.

This trauma of Ms. Nataly and her children shows how rotten and corrupt the Croatian judicial and social system is.

Mrs. Nataly's family lived in Donja Stubica, Nataly was an employee of HT who fed the family, while Mr. Marinović found himself in customs, demoted, due to political puzzles. (Karamarko case, leaking of documents, UDBA)

This is Neven Kucelj, a judge from Donja Stubica, a sleepy little town in Zagorje — a rural region of Croatia just a short drive from the capital which feels frozen in time.

I used to bump into Judge Kucelj when I started working in Donja Stubica for an American property investor. My family had bought a flat there, and we used to pass by each other when I was out walking my dog. A dapper, bohemian fellow, often dressed in a corduroy suit, perhaps with a paisley cravat, he would mumble hello into his beard and avoid eye contact. His parents live next door to a good friend of mine.

When I signed the contract for the flat, I never imagined that this risked trapping me in Donja Stubica for the rest of my working life. I never dreamed that one day a Croatian man I was yet to meet yet would try to defraud my family and I of our property and cash, and take away from me the two children I was destined to give life to.

I never dreamed of the role Judge Neven Kucelj would play in this.

In 2007 I entered a courtroom for the first time in my life. A local man brought a vexatious claim against my employer, and I was called as a witness. Judge Kucelj didn’t take long to see through the claimant and throw out the case, telling him that he was wasting everyone’s time.

A KNAPHILL mother of twins is more determined than ever to bring her nine-year-old boys back to the UK after their father abducted them from her and took them to his native Croatia.

Nataly Anderson has fought a seven-year battle with her former husband and in courts across Europe to secure custody of the twins, but the children remain in Croatia, where they were born in 2013.

She is now seeking to build wider support for her cause by asking for “concerned citizens” to sign her petition addressed to the Governments of Croatia, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, the European Union and even His Holiness Pope Francis.

The breadth of the petition reflects the tangled complexity of Nataly’s case and what she sees as the need to appeal to ever higher reaches of authority to secure what she believes would be a satisfactory resolution for her and the twins.

The family moved back to London from Croatia in early 2016, Nataly having secured a job in the UK, and in June of that year her husband and father of the twins, Zvonimir Marinovic, told Nataly that he was taking the twins on holiday to Croatia.

About NOK 50,000. Norwegian couples had to pay directly to orphanages in Colombia in order to adopt a child.

This was in addition to the costs of the adoption itself.

Colombian authorities responded that the sum was called a "donation".

- After all, the children do not live in a six-star hotel, said the head of the Colombian adoption governing body, Beatriz Helena Guzman, to the Norwegian authorities when they were on an inspection trip to the country.

Nevertheless, 11 years passed from the time the Norwegian authorities were first notified of the donations in 1994 until they put an end to them in 2005. 

IN MARCH, the alarm went off in Denmark.

Last week, France followed suit:

All adoptions from Madagascar had to stop.

Right now, four Norwegian couples are waiting to have a child from the African country.

What happens when a child from there is to be adopted to Norway?

Last month, this gang allegedly kidnapped a two years old girl from Malad, took her to Malwani and later Nashik where they wanted to sell her for Rs two lakh, said a Kurar police station official here

MUMBAI: A gang which allegedly sold babies to needy couples has been busted here with the arrest of six persons from Nashik and Mumbai, police said on Tuesday.

The accused were identified as Irfan Khan (26), Salauddin Sayyed (23), Adil Khan (19), Taukeer Sayyed (26), Raza Sheikh and Samadhan Jagtap.

Last month, this gang allegedly kidnapped a two years old girl from Malad, took her to Malwani and later Nashik where they wanted to sell her for Rs two lakh, said a Kurar police station official here

MUMBAI: A gang which allegedly sold babies to needy couples has been busted here with the arrest of six persons from Nashik and Mumbai, police said on Tuesday.

The Hague Conference on Private International Law