Chinese parents finally dare to look for daughters they gave away long ago. The one-child policy has been abolished for a few years now, so they no longer get a fine. Behind the shame that remains is the deep need to know how their child is doing.

Eefje Rammeloo2 July 2020 , 10:57 AM

Ye Yunfeng has a face full of laughter lines, the face of someone who likes to get up to mischief and can laugh happily. He must be a nice father to his son and daughter. There are two of them, the third was an accident. The laugh lines suddenly disappear. "Had it been a son, I might have fled into the mountains with him." It was the heyday of the one-child policy, and Farmer Ye couldn't pay another fine.

His parents still knew someone who could make the baby disappear. The girl was a few days old when her parents gave her to a crippled man in the morning. “The sun wasn't up yet,” Ye recalls. When he regretted it a few years later, he went after the man, but he turned out to be dead. He would give something to see his now 34-year-old daughter. The great thing is: nobody can fix it anymore, because the one-child policy is history.

A few hundred parents spend their Saturday afternoon on a square in the town of Shouning. They walk restlessly from one side of the square to the other. Maybe their daughter will also register just today. On a table in the semicircular gazebo lie sterile-wrapped cotton swabs and needles. The ladies who manage the table are sure to prick the fingers of the seekers. They drip some blood onto a card that they staple to a form in a brown envelope. Those who cannot write can leave it to them.

---------- Forwarded message ---------

From: Per Sundberg

Date: Thu 2. Jul 2020 at 13:50

Subject: SV: MFoF redovisar slutrapport om indikatorer

To: ACT

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90 years of IST: the structural and substantive change in the International Social Service from its beginnings to the present day - Part I.

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World Children Foundation

The quality of the mediation process

an intercountry adoption permit holder

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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

Nigeria stops

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Minister Dekker informs the House of Representatives about the progress of the family law topics of parenthood and adoption and a number of legislative processes.

In May of this year, an additional hearing on intercountry adoption from Ethiopia was held in the Committee for Welfare, Public Health and Family of the Flemish Parliament. This hearing came after the testimony of Thereza De Wannemaeker who questioned her adoption from Ethiopia in 2009. Various testimonials from Ethiopian adopted children and their parents followed, after which Flemish Member of Parliament Lorin Parys (N-VA) asked for an additional hearing in the Flemish Parliament to hear those involved.

During the hearing, the then Flemish Minister of Welfare, Jo Vandeurzen (CD&V), promised to set up an expert panel to conduct in-depth research into past adoptions and formulate policy recommendations. The former Flemish Government compiled this panel in July. Recently, Christof Bex and Miranda N. Aerts, both adopted and well known with the theme, were also added to the panel. This happened after 23 adoptees in an open letter to the current Flemish Minister of Welfare, Wouter Beke (CD&V), criticized the fact that none of the adoptees co-led the investigation. The panel will meet for the first time shortly to define the content and determine a concrete work approach.

Unfortunately, malpractice within adoption remains a reality, despite efforts made worldwide to prevent them. In March 2016, ISS1 published "Responding to Illegal Adoptions: a professional handbook". This international publication was the first attempt to provide a comprehensive overview of possible recovery and prevention measures. Stakeholders and experts from various countries contributed to the handbook and highlighted action points from a legal, psychosocial, social and political context. In summary, David M Smolin² formulated four perspectives and four recommendations at the end of the handbook, which we present below.

Four perspectives for looking at adoption fraud

1. Adoption as controversial and paradoxical

Two Haitian adoptees found their biological family in Haiti through a DNA project. In both cases, the children in the 1980s appear not to have been consciously given up for adoption. Their biological family has never stopped looking for them ever since.

Nieuwsuur last year investigated adoptions from Haiti and found that on the Caribbean island many parents have given their children to Catholic nuns, who promised them that the children would be educated and fed and then return to their families. But after a while the children turned out to have been adopted abroad.

Volunteers from Plan Kiskeya collected DNA from relatives of missing children in the town of Jacmel in May last year. So two DNA matches have now emerged from that meeting. One of them is Louis Wietzes who came to the Netherlands in 1988. "I never had much need to find my biological family. My adoptive parents had been told that my mother couldn't take good care of me and had taken me to an orphanage. I didn't know what a search would bring me."

Dumbfounded

This will change when Wietzes lands on the Plan Kiskeya website in April. "I looked around a bit on that website and suddenly saw my own Haitian surname on the photo of a woman looking for her son, whose first name matched one of my first names. Only the place of birth was wrong."