After the Dutch documentary in 2017, Ankestyrelsen (the National Board of Appeal, a department under the Ministry of Social Affairs) has, like Switzerland also conducted an investigation into adoptions from Sri Lanka to Denmark. However, the Danish authorities came to the conclusion that there have been no wrongdoings or problems with these adoptions. I requested access to see the documents but received the following answer from Ankestyrelsen: “ You have requested access to see the documents showing the communication between the Danish authorities and Sri Lankan authorities regarding adoptions”. Also, you have requested access to documents showing all communication in the past 5 years between Danish authorities and other countries in Europe regarding adoptions from Sri Lanka. You have requested access in an email stated 6 January 2020. Ankestyrelsen has now reviewed you request and the result is as follow:
1) We will send you a final protocol describing the process of searching for biological family in Sri Lanka
2) Further, you will not be granted access to see the cases. On the next pages you can read more about the rejection.
Further, a 5 pages document explaining the rejection was included with some abstracts below:
– We also emphasize that you have no particular interest to get the inquiry processed despite a great amount of resource consumption. For example, you are not a journalist nor researcher. You being a part of “Åbenhed I Adoption” and ACT (againstchildtrafficking) is not a particular interest that will entail you to get access
My sincere hope that a journalist or researcher with access to Ankestyrelsen will investigate this!
Jin Vilsgaard
