roots in nowhere

For years, Celin Fässler believed she knew who her biological mother was. Until she discovers irregularities in her documents. The story of an officially made impossible search for identity.

Celin Fässler's adoption story begins three weeks too early. She was not yet three weeks old when she was brought to her new family in a neighboring community of St.Gallen in 1982 by the adoption agent Alice Honegger and the Sri Lankan lawyer Rukmani Thavanesan. According to the law, the child must be at least six weeks old. It's not the only inconsistency in Fässler's adoption story.

She grows up sheltered, but realizes early on that she is different from most children. And yet she is not the only exotic creature on the playground. Three other children from Sri Lanka are growing up in her family. Other families in the community are also taking in Sri Lankan children. Fässler remembers common occasions. She can no longer say whether the adoptive parents met for friendship or for other reasons. Did they also talk about Alice Honegger's machinations at the time and about the fact that the canton had meanwhile withdrawn her license to broker adoptions? Or about the fact that Celin Fässler's adoption happened at the time when Honegger didn't have permission?

When she is 17, her parents give her the adoption papers. "I asked so many questions back then, I needed that," says Celin Fässler. It contains an address just outside of Negombo, a coastal town north of Colombo that is characterized by fishing and tourism. It is the address of the woman who is listed as the mother on her birth certificate. Back then, in 1999, Fässler knew nothing about baby farms, about the acting mothers who posed as the mothers of these babies to the authorities for money and signed declarations of consent, and about the fact that children were also snatched from their birth mothers from childbirth. To this day she does not know the circumstances under which her birth mother gave her away - voluntarily or involuntarily.

Celin Fässler's Sri Lankan passport

The documents in her hands calm Fässler. She can always look into it whenever she's ready, she thinks. She attends the business school in St.Gallen. During the two-month stay in Welschland, she met her future boyfriend. After the WMS she moves to Lausanne and stays there for five years.

Foreign homeland...

2007 is a turning point in her life. She separates from her boyfriend, wants to start studying and move back to eastern Switzerland. Before that, she takes a three-month sabbatical. For the first time she travels alone to Sri Lanka. "I moved around somewhat aimlessly," as she says today. She doesn't want to look for her mother, but to carefully approach her roots and develop a feeling for her original homeland, which she has only known - and actually to this day - as a holiday country.

She immediately feels this strange bond with a world that is largely foreign to her, which is reported by many adoptees who visit their country of origin. "I felt very comfortable in Sri Lanka right from the start," says Fässler. Even if she is a woman traveling alone. The fact that this was extremely dangerous turned out to be a prejudiced narrative. A story that prevailed in its former environment in Eastern Switzerland.

"I had many wonderful and beautiful experiences in Sri Lanka," reports Fässler. A sensitive driver explains to her the difficulties that can arise if he simply takes her to her mother's address. Her unannounced appearance could raise hopes and expectations in the other person for which she is not prepared. Many family reunions have failed because of this.

Celin Fässler realizes that 2007 won't be the year when she finds out who her biological family is. She has the address and now she knows the pitfalls.

... domestic alienation

Back in Switzerland, she is now 25, she develops a feeling for racism and post-colonial contexts for the first time. "Until now, that just wasn't an issue for me," says Fässler. In western Switzerland, many acquaintances and friends had a migration background. And as a child, she hadn't recognized racist attributions as such. "Of course, you could hear references to skin color here and there in the playground." When she reported such experiences at home, however, it was said that she was just a sensitive child.

In addition, there is the latent expectation of eternal gratitude, which, as Fässler says, nips any form of independence in the bud. She is always told that her biological mother gave her away out of sheer necessity because she was an illegitimate child and had been rejected by the family in Sri Lanka. Throughout her life, Fässler was taught that she should be thankful that she was saved from this misery. Even as a child, this rescue story aroused doubts in her. She asks herself: Why do I have to be more grateful than other children? She has the feeling that she is not allowed to express her opinion, that she is not allowed to express her needs.

Even today, people of her adoptive parents' generation, who don't know her better, often tell her how nice it was of her husband to let her bear his name. "After the marriage, I kept the name of my adoptive family," says Fässler. The fact that post-colonial and racially tinged ways of thinking are elements of every adoption biography is difficult for many adoptive parents to accept and is sometimes denied. Many adopted people experience this. After all, most adopted their children believing they were doing something good.

"I was imported like a box of bananas" - a comment that often escapes her lips during this time when someone asks her about her adoption. A sarcasm that she is gradually able to put down, thanks to the questions from her two own children.

NGO lets those affected hang

The sensitivity held against her shapes Fässler's life and, above all, the way in which she enters into relationships. It wasn't until she met her current husband in 2009 that she realized through him that all her life she had only reacted to the expectations of others. That is changing now. She is completing her studies in translation. She arrives, with herself, in life, in her independence, in her relationship. She starts her own family.

Your son has a congenital heart defect. He has to be flown to the children's hospital in Zurich as an emergency. Now she feels first-hand how it feels for a mother when you have to hand the child over to someone else from one moment to the next. If only for a while. The boy is healthy today.

In 2017, ten years after her last trip to Sri Lanka, she feels ready. She finally wants to know who is hiding behind the address on the birth certificate, who her birth mother is. She contacts the International Swiss Social Service (SSI), who are supposed to support her in her search for money. For months she heard nothing from the SSI, and when she asked her questions she procured all the documents that the NGO needed for the research. Then radio silence again. The promised regular consultations never happened.

To this day, Fässler cannot say whether it was due to the regular exchange of staff or the SSI's research strategy that nothing new came out. In another case, the person waits six years in vain for results. It later turns out that the SSI confidant in Sri Lanka was anything but trustworthy. The "Observer" will report on this in 2020. Fässler tells him that the SSI's inaction made her feel as if she had been sold for the second time. To this day, social services owe her a statement explaining exactly what the requested money was spent on.

Shortly before, Swiss television broadcast a documentary about the baby trade in Sri Lanka in the 1980s and 90s and, above all, took a close look at the key Swiss liaison, Alice Honegger, who has since passed away from St. Gallen. It turns out that a number of adoption documents, such as birth certificates and consent forms from birth mothers, contained inconsistencies or were obviously forged. Adoptive parents in Switzerland can spend up to CHF 15,000 to find a baby. Money disappearing into the pockets of the likes of Alice Honegger and her fellow Sri Lankan lawyers. Officially, however, these prohibited funds never flowed.

This is a shock for Celin Fässler and many others affected. In 2018, a group led by Sarah Ineichen founded the association Back to the Roots, which from then on took care of the dossiers of people adopted from Sri Lanka in Switzerland, supported them in their search, put them in touch with people in Sri Lanka and set up a counseling service. He is now also a contact point for adoptees from India. The federal government and some cantons support the association financially. He can hardly cope with the many inquiries at the moment.

New start and setbacks

With the certainty of the stable private environment behind her, she travels to Sri Lanka again in 2019. A Back to the Roots liaison accompanies them on site. The search begins in the morning in the archives of the maternity ward in Negombo hospital. A small, stuffy room filled with stacks of paper. An archival nightmare. After an hour of fruitless rummaging - Fässler has almost given up hope - the person in charge asks with a meaningful smile if she wants to know what time she was born.

So there's another document, another piece of the puzzle! And the mother's name and address still match the previous papers. But there is more. In the hospital files she reads the name of a father for the first time. There is also talk of siblings. "According to this document, I would have been the youngest child in the family. This new information ripped the rug from under my feet." The version with the illegitimate child begins to crumble.

Your confidant handles the situation well. After visiting the archives, they stroll wordlessly across the market, which is located directly in front of the hospital. He lets her linger on her thoughts. Around noon, they decide to drive to the address given after all.

Celin Fässler has to wait in the car when they arrive in the specified suburb. The person of trust wants to go ahead and find out. But then the next low blow: The address that gave her the certainty for years that she could find her birth family does not exist. never existed Possibly invented. Whoever. Now everything is open, everything is uncertain.

Presumably fake: Celin Fässler's birth certificate.

According to the Swiss constitution, everyone has the right to know their biological and genetic origins. In Celin Fässler and countless other cases of adoption from abroad, this right does not apply. The recently published study in the canton of St.Gallen, in which the documents of all 86 adoptions from Sri Lanka to St.Gallen were systematically examined, has shown that papers were not only forged in individual cases, but systematically.

The result is scandalous : in not a single case were the applicable laws and regulations complied with. "Now, at least, no one can claim that these are just isolated cases," comments Fässler on the report. "It was also healing for me that the post-colonial connection was finally established with scientific evidence."

Social Director Laura Bucher acknowledges the canton's failures in the adoption process, but believes it is too early to officially apologize to those affected on behalf of the government. “When is the right time?” asks Celin Fässler. The government

According to its own statements, it would like to make additional efforts to make up for the omissions and misconduct at both cantonal and federal level. 'You must act now. The more time that passes, the less chance there is of finding out anything,” says Fässler.

If the documents are unreliable, then the only hope is that genetic records match. Celin Fässler's DNA is also recorded in two databases. So far without result. There were only hits from fifth cousins ??living anywhere in the world. A database shows relatively precisely in which region there are many close relatives. However, their parameters do not point to Sri Lanka, but to southern India.

This opens up another bouquet of questions: Doesn't Celin Fässler come from Sri Lanka at all? Or did her biological mother migrate to Sri Lanka from southern India? The surname in their documents also indicates an origin from the Muslim minority in Sri Lanka. In Sri Lanka, however, she was assured that in this relatively isolated community, nobody would ever give their child away. But is her name even true? Who is Celin Fassler?

Only hope remains

It's an emotional up and down not knowing who you actually are, explains Celin Fässler, who is now responsible for communication at the Back to the Roots association. Roots in nowhere, or, as she likes to say herself: «aerial roots». “Of course I haven't given up hope of finding out about my biological family. But I'm also aware that time is working against us."

When asked if she would like a relationship with her biological family, she replies: "It's always about some form of relationship. I imagine them positively, but I can already see the difficulties that can arise.” For example, if the family only finds out that the adopted person is alive after contacting them, it is also a traumatic experience for them. And what if it doesn't work linguistically or interpersonally? After all, hardly anyone knows the real reasons why her mother actually gave her away.

Experiences from the few people who have found their biological families through Back to the Roots or other organizations have shown just how complicated it can get. The meetings can raise hopes or demands, up to and including a demand to move to Sri Lanka immediately and work for the well-being of the family.

It makes her sad and angry that the Swiss authorities have been almost systematically negligent in handling the adoption papers, making it virtually impossible for adopted people to find out about their own identity. In hardly any case could they be sure that the declarations of consent of the biological mothers in Sri Lanka were properly and without coercion. "That was apparently not important, although national media had already reported on Alice Honegger's machinations and her business interests in the early 1980s."

Celin Fässler rarely talks to her adoptive family about her search for her origins. "It's my story. First and foremost, I have to deal with it."

"