US alleges baby-selling in Vietnam
From: ryan nelson <sociolgst@yahoo.com>
Reply-To: sociolgst@yahoo.com, Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
To: vsg@u.washington.edu
Date: Thu, Apr 24, 2008 at 3:45 PM
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080424/ap_on_re_as/vietnam_adoptions
While traveling with a female English teaching colleague of mine two years ago in countryside Thanh Hoa an impoverished older woman definitely implied that we take/buy her baby. I really thought little of it as to be in her place I might have done the same thing. Had we acquiesced and decided to take the baby from Viet Nam I hope some regulations would have prevented such an act.
An experience I'll never forget and rarely like to tell as it's not how I want my friends and family (whom are not able to understand the plight of so many Vietnamese) to think of Viet Nam and its people.
Profound in reality, though.
Ryan Nelson
--------
From: Tom Miller <milltom@gmail.com>
Reply-To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
To: sociolgst@yahoo.com, Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Date: Thu, Apr 24, 2008 at 4:21 PM
Dear Prof. Nelson,
Since the infamous "Orphan Airlift" and before, the economic pressure on a poor Vietnamese mother to give up her child to enable it to become a U.S. citizen (and hopefully provide an economic lifeline in the future) is tremendous, as it is in all poor countries. Helping children in Vietnam has always been the better solution given the opportunity for middleman profit and exploitation in the adoption business. Organizations such as Holt do their best to screen, but the pressure is still there. You should not be shocked that a woman is willing to give up her child given the circumstances. Try to imagine yourself in a similar situation.
Sincerely,
Tom Miller*
*One of the attorneys who filed a class action lawsuit against Henry Kissinger and adoption agencies over the "Orphan Airlift" in 1975 to have the files reviewed and return children to their families when appropriate.
--
Miller & Ngo, Attorneys at Law
www.millerngo.com
725 Washington Street
Oakland, California 94607
Tel: 510 891-0616 Fax: 510 839-9857
Hanoi Office: 18A Nguyen Bieu
Cell: 091-435-7929
--------
From: Christina Firpo <christina.firpo@gmail.com>
Reply-To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Date: Fri, Apr 25, 2008 at 8:30 AM
Thanks Ryan!
It's a very interesting article indeed. I am doing some work on colonial era networks of human trafficking and child sales is a huge part of my research. One thing that amazed me was how some of the practices of selling the children are repeated in today's sales. By practices I mean the process of sale: the way of obtaining the child, the broker,...
In the colonial period parents seemed to sell their children for financial reasons, because they could not support another child, or because of a major catastrophe (flood, famine...). From what I can glean from the sources, parents sold their children because they felt the child would be better off in another, post-sale, lifestyle--frequently that was domestic servitude. In other cases, children were kidnapped from their parents and then sold.
I would be interested in knowing whether or not the kidnapping (with the intent to sell) still occurs and, if so, has it increased now that adoption requests have increased.
Best,
Christina
--------
From: Diane Fox <DNFOX@holycross.edu>
Reply-To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Date: Fri, Apr 25, 2008 at 9:06 AM
One more anecdote, from a different direction:
Some years ago, when Nhat Tan was truly a flower village, I would go periodically to visit a woman I knew who grew flowers there. One time as we were talking about what was new since the last time I saw her she told me that a French woman had been around trying to adopt one of the children of a poor woman in the village--but that the mother refused to let her child go.
Diane
--------
From: Janet Hoskins <jhoskins@usc.edu>
Reply-To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Date: Fri, Apr 25, 2008 at 9:28 AM
Another anecdote about adoption and child stealing:
I have a friend in HCMC who used to manage a small hotel visited by many French tourists. She helped one couple to translate a series of legal documents to a adopt an infant who had been brought to them by a broker who described her as an "orphan". It turns out the infant was not really an orphan but was stolen from the family.
The broker/lawyer was arrested and so was my friend, who spent six months in jail under rather horrendous circumstances (tiger cage cells, etc.). She was eventually released since the testimony indicated that she had nothing to do with procuring the baby, and had only wanted to help out her hotel guests by translating some legal documents for them.
This happened about 7 years ago, but it indicates both that actual kidnapping does seem to occur and that the government is trying to crack down on it.
Janet
--------
From: Joe Hannah <jhannah@u.washington.edu>
Reply-To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Date: Fri, Apr 25, 2008 at 10:11 AM
Dear Christine and all,
While conducting research in 2003 (I think it was) there was a major scandal in HCMC involving an OB-Gyn doctor at one of the hospitals there. He delivered babies, then informed the mothers that the babies were still-born. He then sold the child to adoption brokers. As I recall, he sold about 6 or so children before he was caught and prosecuted. I do not know what became of the children.
I did not follow the case closely, but it was reported in the media at the time -- I most likely read about it in Tuoi Tre, since that was the paper I read most often.
Cheers,
Joe
--------
From: Tuan Hoang <thoang1@nd.edu>
Reply-To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Date: Fri, Apr 25, 2008 at 10:41 AM
In the 1930s, Hoang Dao of Tu Luc Van Doan published a series of court-reports-cum-social-critique, later
collected as Truoc Vanh Mong Ngua. Child-selling was an issue of which he was both sympathetic and critical.
Reading this thread made me think of the me. mi`n - a woman that engages in kipnapping children. In popular
usage, it's a near-equivalent of the boogeyman in the West. It wasn't (isn't?) uncommon to hear a Vietnamese
adult trying to stop a child crying by saying, "Ni'n ddi, kho^ng thi` me. mi`n dde^'n ba't ba^y gio*`" - Stop
crying or me. mi`n will come & take you away.
Out of curiosity, I Googled 'me min" (preferences: Vietnamese) and saw that the Vietnamese press has several
articles this year on them. Most attention concerns prostitution, but also some on baby-dealing, confirming
what Joe said below.
http://www2.thanhnien.com.vn/Phapluat/2008/2/20/226625.tno
http://www2.thanhnien.com.vn/Phapluat/2008/2/21/226736.tno
http://www2.thanhnien.com.vn/Phapluat/2008/2/22/226920.tno
http://dantri.com.vn/Sukien/Vu-buon-ban-tre-so-sinh-Me-min-dong-gia-me-de/2008/2/219326.vip
One of the articles allege that me min in Hanoi & the north sold infants to families in China, with males
costing nearly twice as much as females. My first thought is, Might it have something to do with the
one-child policy? But I suspect even if true, there is lots more to it because the history of this practice
long predates the Chinese one-child policy era.
~Tuan
--------
From: Nicolas Lainez <niklainez@yahoo.com>
Reply-To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Date: Sat, Apr 26, 2008 at 8:25 AM
Dear Tuan and VSG readers,
Nowadays, Vietnamese press often talks about baby-selling cases happening both in Southern and Northern Vietnam. Mothers selling babies that they don’t want to raise from absent fathers, “traffickers” taking several babies across the Northern border to China, abandonment, etc. Among many, enclosed are two recent articles.
The issue of baby-selling is slowly been assimilated to the more global one of “trafficking of women and children” under heavy international pressure to “fight an immoral plea”. Such it is the case for cross-border marriages with Taiwan and South Korea, or even labour migration to Asia where many candidates are indebted and forced to work under hard conditions. I believe that a massive confusion is ongoing among aid organisations and agencies when thinking and addressing all these different forms of people transaction and exploitation.
I also agree with you Tuan that a close look to the past could be enriching to better understand the practice of baby-selling. Back to the 40s, Andre Baudrit published an excellent (and hardly accessible) book that presents various stories about baby-trafficking as well as cultural hypotheses to understand why this phenomena did happen apparently so massively. The full reference is:
André Baudrit, “La femme et l’enfant dans l’Indochine française et dans la Chine du sud (rapt - vente - infanticide) [Women and children in French Indochina and Southern China (kidnapping, trade, infanticide)]”, Bulletin de la Société des études indochinoises (Saigon), xvi (3), p. 5-152, 1941, reprinted 1943 and 1945, Saigon, Editions de la Société des imprimeries et librairies indochinoises, under the title: Bétail humain.
Thanks.
Regards.
Nicolas Lainez
EHESS, Ho Chi Minh City
Trafficking ring sells 40 babies abroad
11:39' 10/04/2008 (GMT+7)
Source: VNE
Policemen returns a baby to his mother
VietNamNet Bridge – Police of Hoan Kiem District, Hanoi, said they have discovered many more members of a baby trafficking network, which sold nearly 40 babies to China.
Hoan Kiem District Police in late February 2008 uncovered a newborn baby trafficking ring and arrested three people. From this clue, they have detected some more members of the network and arrested four more. Four others have run away and are being hunted.
According to investigations, these people sold 38 children to China. Police have seized many notices of birth granted by hospitals in HCM City, Dong Nai Province and Hanoi from these people.
The case has been transferred to the Hanoi Police Agency for further investigation and action.
Chinese police detain two suspects over trafficking Vietnamese babies
www.chinaview.cn 2007-11-29 15:31:45
NANNING, Nov. 29 (Xinhua) -- Chinese police have detained a Vietnamese woman and a Chinese man who allegedly smuggled four babies from Vietnam into China, local police said Thursday.
The woman was caught holding two babies in arms on the China-Vietnam border in Dongxing City of southern Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region Tuesday night, when she illegally entered Chinese territory across a river. The woman seemed not to be the mother judging from her appearance, a spokesman with the Dongxing police said.
Police questioned the 53-year-old woman surnamed Pham from Mong Cai City of northeast Vietnam's Quang Ninh Province, and she confessed that she had planned to sell the two babies aged below two months to a man surnamed Ruan from south China's Guangdong Province, the spokesman said.
Pham also confessed that she has smuggled four babies on three separate occasions into China this month.
Ruan was later captured in a makeshift shed in Dongxing, which neighbors Mong Cai.
The two babies are now being attended by the Dongxing Municipa lObstetric and Gynaecology Hospital, the spokesman said.
The case is being further investigated, he added.
Editor: Jiang Yuxia
--------
From: Hue-Tam Ho Tai <hhtai@fas.harvard.edu>
Reply-To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Date: Sat, Apr 26, 2008 at 8:53 AM
Some anecdotal evidence:
In fiction, besides Vu Trong Phung's reportage, Ngo Tat To's Tat Den includes a scene of child-selling (as well as wife-selling); also his short story "Mot Bua No" (1943) mentions selling a daughter into service to a rich landowner. Many girls of poor families were "adopted" by rich families to be unpaid servants. They were usually called "Nuoi." There was one such living across the street from us.
Hue-Tam Ho Tai
--------
From: Oscar Salemink <OJHM.Salemink@fsw.vu.nl>
Reply-To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Date: Sat, Apr 26, 2008 at 1:55 PM
Another anecdote, about "adoption": I remember visiting a CRES project in Hoa Binh province around 2000 when an ethnic Dao woman approached my friend Vien, asking him whether he knew where her baby child was. Her story was that the baby had been sick, she had taken it so the local clinic where the nurse had told her that the child was very ill. It could not be cured in Vietnam, only overseas. Fortunately, the nurse said, there was this French couple nearby who were willing to take the baby to France where it would be cured. The mother agreed, thinking that she would get her child back later. As that never happened she approached everybody whom she thought had foreign contacts, in order to find out the whereabouts of her child (she never received an address either). Heart-wrenching. This was at a time when some hotels in Hanoi (like Eden) and HCMC were filled with western couples eagerly waiting for their adoptive child, and usually complaining about the amounts of money that they had to pay under the table - apparently not thinking about the moral implications that such payments for an adoptive child would have for themselves and their 'good intentions'.
Like others I also know many people who adopted legally and legitimately. Still, the desire for an adoptive child in western countries translates into an economic demand globally. I find it naive to think that in this unequal world of ours such a global demand for adoptable children would not create its supply- both legitimate and illegitimate - regardless of the intentions of the aspiring adoptive parents. There has been a series of scandals, e.g. the 'adoption ring' in southern Vietnam involving dozens of doctors, nurses, officials and some orphanages (I believe it was busted in 2000). More recent scandals elsewhere, like the infamous L'Arche de Zoe (the French organization adopting orphans from Darfur who turned out to be children stolen from their parents in Tchad) or in my country, Holland, adoption from an orphanage in India which turned out to be a disguise for child trafficking. I am sure that issues are often more complex than they seem, and that intentions of adoptive parents may be honorable, but that does not mean that others than (aspiring) adoptive parents should keep silent, or that the practice of transnational adoption should be beyond social, political and/or ethical debate. I for one refuse to have the naive faith in good intentions of ohers as the ethnic Dao mother above.
Oscar Salemink
--------
From: Matt Steinglass <mattsteinglass@gmail.com>
Reply-To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Date: Sun, Apr 27, 2008 at 5:03 AM
Hello Nicolas,
While there are no doubt many possibilities for cultural confusion in an area like this, at least the 10 most egregious cases the US’s consular investigations team documented involved clear situations of parents either deceived or pressured into signing “relinquishing” papers for children they did not want to give up. In some cases hospitals refused to release children until parents could pay inflated medical bills, and ultimately turned them over for adoption. In one case a woman’s mother-in-law put her baby up for adoption without her knowledge. A situation in which orphanages receive most of their funding via contributions from foreign adoption agencies, and are required by the terms of their agreements to provide x children for adoption in exchange for each y dollars in foreign contributions, seems almost guaranteed to produce this kind of abuse.
Best
Matt Steinglass
--------
From: Stephen Denney <sdenney@ocf.berkeley.edu>
Reply-To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Date: Mon, Apr 28, 2008 at 4:49 PM
Vietnam announced today it is ending its program with the U.S. for child adoptions, in an apparent reaction to the U.S. embassy report on this issue.
- Steve Denney
--------
Adoptions
------------------------
From: Haughton, Dominique <DHAUGHTON@bentley.edu>
Reply-To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Date: Fri, Apr 25, 2008 at 9:10 AM
Greetings to all! As an adoptive parent of a child from Vietnam, what I would say is that the situation is often much more complex than what the media or published research would suggest, and I’d be quite slow to try to comment on these issues, unless one really knows the terrain, so to speak (the problem is that this knowledge is very difficult to obtain …). It’s so difficult to ferret out the truth and when it is possible, the truth often is not what one might have expected … Just my two cents, all the best, Dominique
--------
From: Hoang t. Dieu-Hien <dieuhien@u.washington.edu>
Reply-To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Date: Fri, Apr 25, 2008 at 10:56 AM
Dear list,
I would like to echo Dominique Haughton's comment that the situation is often much much more complex than the information presented.
I once had a very clear, strong opinion about international adoption. I now bow in humility, acknowledging that I am ill-equipped to hold such clear and strong opinion about the topic. I also hesitate to offer stories that I know, fearing that they will be viewed from one or two angles only, leaving the less heard in dark shadows. Why not explain them fully? I'm ill-equipped to do so.
Humbly,
Hien
--------