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SRI LANKA Norway investigates illegal adoptions in Sri Lanka: 11,000 children involved

Colombo had revealed the data on the custody in 2017, but after a series of events, Oslo decided to create an independent commission to investigate it. Baby farms were popular in the 1970s, when Sri Lankan children with false documents were sold to European couples. Some remember how their younger brothers disappeared in this way.

Colombo () – The Norwegian government decided to investigate adoptions that took place in Sri Lanka starting in the 1980s after discovering illegal adoptions involving at least 11,000 children, according to Sri Lankan data.

In a statement to the daily Verden’s Gang (Vg), the Norwegian Minister of Children and Family, Kjersti Toppe, explained that the executive decided to carry out an independent investigation into the matter by creating a commission that will examine the history of adoptions.

In the 1970s, there were several “baby farms” in Sri Lanka that sold minors to European couples by giving them false documents. As admitted by the country’s authorities in 2017, some 11,000 children were fraudulently sold for adoption abroad. Sources from the Sri Lankan Ministry of Women and Children revealed to that already in 2021 the organization “Romanticized Immigration”, directed by the director Priyangika Samanthie (a Norwegian adopted as a girl in Sri Lanka), had asked to carry out an investigation into international adoptions.

Sanuth Nakalanda, an NGO activist who was involved in field research, explained that “the issue of adoptions came to light when a Dutch woman adopted in Sri Lanka searched for her biological parents. During the investigation it became clear that all the documents had been forged. This adoption scam was part of the baby farm mafia. The Dutch citizen filed a lawsuit and because of this corrupt business, adoption in non-European countries was banned for a while in the Netherlands.”

Chathura Semage, a resident of Ampara in the Eastern Province, still remembers the day a white car drove off with her mother, Karunawathie Semage, and her two-year-old sister, Damayanthi, while she and her younger brother Dilan stayed at home. Returning home at night, her mother was alone. When her children asked her about her sister, the woman replied that she had been given up for adoption. “This happened in 1986 or 1987. I remember that she was around 10 years old. It was a time when my mother was struggling to survive. I remember that a person came to visit us several times and gave us money. When we said goodbye, I never thought that my sister Damyanthi would go abroad and that this would be the last time she would see her. I was saddened that my sister was given up for adoption, although I understand that my mother had no choice after our father left us.”

Karunawathie had been paid 1,800 Sri Lankan rupees (about $55 at the time) for her daughter: “I don’t blame my mother, although I never saw my sister again. My mother couldn’t feed the three of us.” Chathura found out later that the person who visited them was a “baby farm broker” in Kochchikade, a suburb of Colombo. The business was run by a court official and her husband, who acted as intermediaries to organize adoptions by foreign couples, mostly Norwegian and Dutch.



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