(AP) – HANOI, Vietnam — A court in northern Vietnam has put 16 people on trial for allegedly selling more than 250 babies for foreign adoption, a court official said Tuesday.
The head of two social welfare centers in Nam Dinh province as well as several doctors and nurses at village clinics went on trial Tuesday, said Dang Viet Hung, the chief judge at the court hearing the case. The defendants are charged with "abuse of power and authority" and could face prison terms of five to 10 years.
The defendants allegedly solicited infants from unwed mothers and those from desperately poor families and falsified documents claiming the babies had been abandoned at village clinics, making them eligible for adoption, Hung said.
The ring sent 266 babies for foreign adoption from 2005 to July 2008, when the activity was discovered, Hung said. He did not know the countries of the adoptive parents.
Tuesday's Thanh Nien (Young People) newspaper reported that each defendant illegally earned 5 million dong ($275) to 10 million dong ($550) overall.
Vietnam and the United States, one of the Southeast Asian country's largest recipients of children for adoption, have yet to renew their bilateral adoption agreement that expired in September.
The U.S. Embassy said in a report in April last year that Vietnam had failed to police its adoption system, allowing corruption, fraud and baby-selling to flourish.
The report described brokers scouring villages for babies, hospitals selling the infants of mothers who cannot pay their bills, and a grandmother giving away her grandchild without telling the child's mother.
Showing posts with label Vietnam. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vietnam. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Human Trafficking in International Adoption
"Adoption is already steeped in the legacy of loss for the child and his family. Add to this the recent revelations of the selling of babies for adoption in countries like Vietnam and India, and one needs only to reconsider who exactly is benefiting from adoption.," says Kevin Minh Allen in his recent Conducive article, The Price We All Pay: Human Trafficking in International Adoption which explores move to change the definition of the word "orphan" to increase intercountry adoption.
"The underlying assumption is that the exportation of a child, regardless of context or circumstances, to a more affluent environment is a 'humanitarian act'. "
"The kidnapping and abduction, coercion and intimidation, and buying and selling of children for adoption are an abomination not just to American values, but also to anyone who takes human rights seriously. Regardless of best intentions and relative (relative being the optimal word here) affluence that many adopted children have experienced, the exposure and punishment of people who engage in fraud and profiteering under the pretense of adoption should be vigorously pursued."
"Jane Jeong Trenka’s essay mentioned the crux of the problem here: In spite of adoption agencies’ contention that they wish they could heal the broken ties between mother and child, there is way too much money to be made off of those broken ties, and adoption agencies have no intention of getting out of the business of finding children for expectant parents."
"The nasty little secret about adoption is that most of the time it is steeped in unnecessary loss for the child and its family."
"...international adoption ... has become a lucrative market for unscrupulous people to exploit a vulnerable population in order to export children overseas to ostensibly satisfy a relatively well-off client class. This demand for healthy infants feeds the cycle of corruption that attempts to cater to its desire for children to build its family. An untold number of children have been either displaced or separated from their birth families, either through coercion, financial motivation or abduction and are now living in adoptive families who remain blissfully unaware or, worse, do not even care."
"The underlying assumption is that the exportation of a child, regardless of context or circumstances, to a more affluent environment is a 'humanitarian act'. "
"The kidnapping and abduction, coercion and intimidation, and buying and selling of children for adoption are an abomination not just to American values, but also to anyone who takes human rights seriously. Regardless of best intentions and relative (relative being the optimal word here) affluence that many adopted children have experienced, the exposure and punishment of people who engage in fraud and profiteering under the pretense of adoption should be vigorously pursued."
"Jane Jeong Trenka’s essay mentioned the crux of the problem here: In spite of adoption agencies’ contention that they wish they could heal the broken ties between mother and child, there is way too much money to be made off of those broken ties, and adoption agencies have no intention of getting out of the business of finding children for expectant parents."
"The nasty little secret about adoption is that most of the time it is steeped in unnecessary loss for the child and its family."
"...international adoption ... has become a lucrative market for unscrupulous people to exploit a vulnerable population in order to export children overseas to ostensibly satisfy a relatively well-off client class. This demand for healthy infants feeds the cycle of corruption that attempts to cater to its desire for children to build its family. An untold number of children have been either displaced or separated from their birth families, either through coercion, financial motivation or abduction and are now living in adoptive families who remain blissfully unaware or, worse, do not even care."
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Fighting to Keep Babies Flowing...
While the U.S. is the biggest importer of babes, it's not the only one who greedily demands that plug in the pipeline be quickly unclogged.
The Irish Times reports that the office of the Minister for Children has invited officials from Vietnam to Ireland in September in an effort to move talks forward on the resumption of an adoption agreement between the two countries.
The State’s five-year bilateral agreement with Vietnam on adoption expired on May 1st this year, leaving more than 200 couples, who had applied to adopt from the country, in limbo until a new agreement is signed. Twenty of those couples, already approved, have been allowed to proceed with their adoptions.
The Irish Times reports that the office of the Minister for Children has invited officials from Vietnam to Ireland in September in an effort to move talks forward on the resumption of an adoption agreement between the two countries.
The State’s five-year bilateral agreement with Vietnam on adoption expired on May 1st this year, leaving more than 200 couples, who had applied to adopt from the country, in limbo until a new agreement is signed. Twenty of those couples, already approved, have been allowed to proceed with their adoptions.
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