Stolen children? without identity (Thailand)
2002-04-18
Stolen children? without identity
Over 900 children received new home in Sweden
Several hundred Swedish adoptees can be stolen from Thailand.
At least 19 children were in the 70's hit with false identities and birth certificate.
The Swedish adoption organization warned - still continued the illegal trade.
Tonight appears journalists Per Lapins and Erik Sandberg's documentary "Children at all costs" at 22:25 on SVT 1.
There is an equally harrowing as revealing depiction of how children in Thailand were provided with false identities and was adopted to Sweden during the years 1974 to 1977.
During this time, more than 900 children from the impoverished country new, Swedish parents - ten times as many as in previous years.
Put in systems several years earlier
The trade ended after police in Thailand in 1977 raided the the orphanage in Bangkok, where many of the children lived before moving to Sweden.
Of the 33 children that were currently on home turned out to be stolen 3, 6 had received brand new, made-up name and a new background, and 16 children had no identity at all.
This filthy human trafficking highlighted in the Swedish media, but never led to any inquiry about the children who have already come to Sweden.
Tonight's documentary shows, however, that the falsification of the children's identity had been put into the system several years earlier.
Twelve of the adoptees Swedes have given Lapins authority to investigate their background.
According to the registry office in Thailand's capital Bangkok had nine of them forged documents - and the remaining three have not been found, most likely they have officially never existed.
Sounded the alarm to headquarters
The Thai police investigation showed that five children who moved to Sweden with the name and background garbled.
- I know of two cases. But we do not know how many it concerns. It may be twenty, there may be hundreds, says Lapin.
In a secret report to the Board for Intercountry Adoptions, Nia, the authority responsible for adoptions are done correctly, made in 1977 shows that single mothers often left their children to this kind of orphanage.
If the poor women were unable to pay "child care" was adopted boy or girl away and income woman received was offset against her guilt.
Nias report also shows that long before the police raid in 1977 turned the alarm to Sweden if the orphanage.
Monica Holmgren, at that time a representative in Bangkok for the organization Adoption Center, which helped 80 children from home to Sweden, says in the report that she was warned early headquartered in orphanages Manager.
Forced to sell their children
Today, 25 years later, say Holmgren told Aftonbladet:
- I devoted myself only to children who had been taken care of by society. I did not have with the private orphanages to do. It was so very fishy about them.
Why forged identities children?
- Digging in Thailand in collaboration with local journalists showed that some of the children have been stolen, others have poor parents had to sell, others have ended up in an orphanage run by crooks, says Per Lapins.
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