Yunlin County prosecutors this week completed their probe into the adoption of 17 Vietnamese children by families in central Taiwan, saying the suspects were not engaged in human trafficking and charging them only with document forgery.
“We found that all of the 17 Vietnamese children were relatives of the Vietnamese women who had acquired [Taiwanese] citizenship by marriage,” Yunlin District Prosecutors’ Office chief prosecutor Huang Yi-hua (黃怡華) said on Wednesday.
These are not cases of child smuggling or international human trafficking, Huang added.
“Evidence indicated that the US$3,000 to US$7,000 paid by each of the Vietnamese families was for obtaining forged birth certificates and processing the documents in Vietnam, and was not payment related to human trafficking activities,” she said.
“Also, it cannot be established that the Vietnamese children who came to Taiwan were brought here solely for the purpose of working, or that they were paid wages that were not commensurate with the nature of their work,” she said.
Twenty-two suspects were charged with document forgery, 14 of whom are former Vietnamese citizens who came to Taiwan through marriage.
Debate over illegal adoption was sparked by start of the investigation started last year, when foreign affairs officials reported receipt of counterfeit documents from a couple applying for a Taiwanese passport and birth certificate for a child who was born in Vietnam.
After investigators raided the residences of the adoptive families, the National Immigration Agency (NIA) released a statement claiming to have cracked an international human trafficking ring, which was reported by most media outlets.
Further investigation revealed that the families adopted children from Vietnam aged between five and 13 who were helping out on their farms and tea plantations.
Some of the children were found to be attending local schools.
At the time, immigrant advocacy group Taiwan International Family Association accused the agency of jumping to conclusions by announcing it was a child smuggling ring involving forced child labor.
The group said it was adoption by families who were certain the kids would be taken care of.
The prosecutors’ conclusion concurred with the statements by the group, saying: “The purpose [of the adoptions] was for the Vietnamese children to live in better economic conditions, which drove the families to produce forged birth certificates to enable adoption by relatives [in Taiwan].”
The indictment for document forgery and dropping of charges for human trafficking was seen as a rebuke of the NIA officials’ handling of the matter.
“We urge the NIA and foreign affairs officials to be more prudent in their scrutiny of documents when handling applications by foreign nationals entering our country,” the prosecutors’ statement said.
Some of the children involved in the illegal adoption scheme have since obtained citizenship, but prosecutors said that they might be repatriated back to Vietnam, depending on the outcome of the trial.
They will be permitted to live with their adopted families for the time being, the prosecutors said.
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