From www.monstersandcritics.com via Deutsche Presse-Agentur:
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 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.
“I am sad and I am very worried, the 35-year-old said. “I don’t even know which country they are in. I don’t know if they are together or apart. They should be with their families in Vietnam, not thousands of miles away with strangers.
Lan and Luong were among 13 children taken away from Vietnam’s smallest and least developed ethnic minority – the Ruc hill tribe – and then given to adoptive parents in Italy and the US months later in return for fees of around 10,000 US dollars per child.
A police investigation has been launched into complaints from the parents that their children were adopted without their permission but villagers fear it will be a whitewash and want foreign governments to intervene. Those pleas to diplomats have so far fallen on deaf ears.
It was in September 2006 when officials from Quang Bing province’s capital Dong Hoi visited the tiny hill tribe, which numbers only 500 people.
They picked out 13 children aged 2 to 9 and offered to house and feed them at a children’s social welfare centre in Dong Hoi and return them when their education and vocational training was complete, the families say they were told.
The parents – all poor farmers and most illiterate – agreed and were driven to Dong Hoi with their children where they signed consent forms placing them into the care of the local authority.
The entire article is available here.
3 Responses
The editors of VVAI believe the province cited in the article is actually Qung Binh, and not Quang Bing. The only US agency licensed in Qung Bihn at the time of these adoptions was FTIA, although agencies in other countries, including Italy, were working in the province as well.
The ‘stolen’ children story has previously been covered in the Irish Daily Mail with a suggested link to adoption into Ireland (see http://www.thefreelibrary.com/STOLEN+TO+ORDER%3b+The+Mail+reporter+who+revealed+the+reason+Ireland…-a0216698202).
You are correct. The story was originally publicized by an anthropologist working with the Ruc people. There are more details in this May 2008 document: http://www.brandeis.edu/investigate/gender/adoption/docs/LarsenWilltheRucChildrenComeHome.pdf.
I did not realize the connection when I first wrote this post for VVAI. The story is back in the news because these parents have been persistent. The article quoted in my post says, “In the provincial capital Dong Hai, Le Thi Thu Ha, the director of the children’s home where the 13 children were taken, confirmed a police investigation had been launched into the circumstances in which the Ruc children were adopted overseas. ‘The local police force started investigating the case a few months ago when the parents persisted with their complaints. We expect the investigation to be complete and the results announced in the first quarter of 2010.’â€