The Dark Side of Adoption
Documentary film screening and debate
in the presence of European Commission whistle-blower Roelie Post
Wednesday 7 November 2018
European Parliament
Hosted by MEPs Dennis de Jong and Ana Gomes
Speech Arun Dohle
I was adopted in 1973 from India to Germany. My personal history is, in short, very similar to what we just saw in the documentary The Traffickers. Today, in this room, there are more adult adoptees. Some of whom have set up organisations to assist victims of these child trafficking practices.
We have representatives here United Adoptees International, Plan Angel, (Colombia), Mijn Roots, (Indonesia), Shapla (Bangladesh), Chilean Adoptees worldwide, among others.
The fact that this transnational organised crime persists, is covered up, is not acknowledged, leads to the fact that there’s no financial support for the organisations who help the victims. Instead, those who trafficked children or still do, receive public funding. Of course, there is no compensation for the damage done either. I would like to mention in particular the International Social Service, which has been the architect of this system and now for example in the Netherlands receives funding from the government to help adoptees with searches. This is a ridiculous conflict of interest.
I got to know Mrs. Post in 2007, long after I started to dig into my own adoption story – during which I figured out that not only my adoption but also many other adoptions were actually child trafficking. I also discovered that children were still being brutally kidnapped and sold for legal intercountry adoption.
In 2006 I started cooperating with international media on such cases and one documentary after documentary followed, exposing this legalised trade in children. In 2016 I was contacted by the production team working on the series The Traffickers, of which The Dark Side of Adoptions was the result.
I always believed that when one explains the authorities here what is really going on in the sending countries, that then it would stop. It would be addressed. Not so.
So, when I met Mrs. Post in 2007, she spelled out the forces and powers in place. And how this issue had been politicised. She explained the difference between the Hague Adoption Convention and the UNCRC. Since then it is clear to me.
Adoptive parents have set up adoption agencies. These adoption agencies united worldwide and lobbied, together with criminal elements for a legalised market in children. These agencies were also the forces behind the creation of the Hague Adoption Convention.
Amici dei Bambini for example is a founding member of Euradopt, the trade association of European adoption agencies.
The Hague Convention, I think we can agree on that, has been created to provide a platform for this organised transnational crime.
We, ACT, took it upon us to act, meaning to report to the law enforcement agencies. We did that in the Netherlands, in India, in Ethiopia. In India, we had to go to Court against the Indian Police in order to force the Police to investigate. Cases are still pending.
We have made numerous complaints to OLAF, the European Anti-Fraud Office, about corruption within EU institutions, all of which were essentially ignored. We have brought to the notice of OLAF that this system which enables adoption agencies to trade in children, is more than just Amici dei Bambini. Basically every adoption agency functions in the same way. Also, EU funding is being illegitimately used to promote Hague compliant child protection systems within and outside the EU.
Since OLAF refused to investigate, specifically the EU funding to Amici dei Bambini, ACT took OLAF finally to Court for failing to open an investigation, seeking the Court’s direction to open an investigation.
It turned out that OLAF is not really independent. It is the European Commission itself.
The strange organisation ACT, which was set up by the European Commission to park Roelie Post, is now taking the European Commission to court.
Coming back to Hague Convention and the UNCRC. Till today I find it incredibly shocking that the European Commission not once, but twice replaced the universally binding UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, with a private law Hague Adoption Convention.
This is the ultimate form of corruption.
Please watch this short compilation of a not yet broadcasted documentary which was filmed 4 years ago. Keeping in mind that Roelie Post was – in the words of one of her former bosses Simon Mordue – in 2005 the font of all knowledge and wisdom, and decisive in allowing the Commission to finally get a grip on what was going on in Romania. And that her career and life have been destroyed since then.
Mine too, by the way.
You will see:
Romania’s then-President Basescu’s firm statement not to re-open intercountry adoption, while visiting President Barroso and having come under pressure to reopen Romania.
Roelie explaining her secondment to ACT
The then Designated Commissioner for Enlargement Olli Rehn about the UNCRC
And the Commission’s child right coordinator Margaret Tuite
As a result, of this “mistake” accession countries, such as Serbia and Montenegro, implement the Hague System – and despite EU funding for local care – export children to Sweden. For an adoption fee. Money.
The first scandal has already been. A child in foster care in Serbia was taken from the foster family and sent to Sweden.
But it goes all far further. See Bulgaria, which is exporting children, or even now the old EU member states which introduce step by step legislation which provides for this legalised market. Including forced adoptions.
