Sri Lanka admits illegal 'baby farms' for adoption

World
Europe

The government of Sri Lanka has launched an investigation into illegal child adoptions in the 1980s, The Guardian reported on Wednesday.

Sri Lankan Health Minister Rajitha Senaratne announced during an interview to Dutch current affairs program Zembla that he would set up a DNA data bank that would enable identity verification of Sri Lankan children adopted by European parents.

Zembla had prepared a documentary titled "Adoptiebedrog – Deel" on an illegal child adoption racket that mushroomed in the country around three decades ago. In an interview to the documentary makers, Senaratte admitted the existence of illegal “baby farms” in Sri Lanka.

'Prison-like conditions'

The inhumane conditions prevailing in these farms had forced the government to suspend its inter-country child adoption program. The Guardian reported that the adoption rules were changed after a police raid in 1987 discovered 20 newborns and 22 women in “prison-like conditions.”

According to a BBC report, around 4,000 children have been adopted by families in the Netherlands and other European countries. One adoptee named Rowan van Veelen told the BBC that he had traveled all the way to Sri Lanka to find his biological mother 27 years after his adoption.

The documentary also showed a victim who claimed that she saw her family members carrying her newborn out of the hospital alive only to be told later on that the baby had died a few minutes the birth.

The documentary makers also alleged that doctors and nurses were hand in glove with international adoption agencies. Zembla maintained that adoption papers were often falsified to legalize the adoptions.