The US embassy in Vietnam released a report yesterday detailing pervasive corruption in the country’s international adoption system, prompting angry denials from the Vietnamese government.
The nine-page report by the embassy’s Consular Investigations unit charges that some Vietnamese orphanages pay parents to put their children up for adoption in order to obtain donations from foreign adoption service providers, who fund most of the orphanages’ budgets.
The report says foreign adoption agencies’ contributions are sometimes embezzled by orphanage officials, while another US report detailed 10 cases of egregious abuse, including babies put up for adoption without their parents’ consent.
The head of Vietnam’s Department of International Adoptions categorically denied the charges and stated that his agency had never seen a case of baby selling or fraud related to international adoption.
“They can say whatever they want,” said Vu Duc Long. “It’s like the human rights issue. The US side says that Vietnam violates human rights, but Vietnam doesn’t.”
Long said the only cases of baby trafficking discovered by police in Vietnam were destined for regional countries like China and were not related to official international adoption procedures.
“The report speaks for itself,” US embassy spokesperson Angela Aggeler said. “The information we have gathered over a long period of time, looking at hundreds of cases, make us feel confident that our report is accurate.”
The US report says adoption fraud stems partly from the requirement under Vietnamese law that foreign adoption service providers (ASPs) must provide funding to a Vietnamese orphanage in order to receive adoption referrals from that orphanage. Agreements between orphanages and ASPs require the orphanage to refer a set proportion of children for adoption in exchange for donations from the foreign ASP.
When the orphanages do not have enough children to refer, they come under pressure to find more, since foreign ASPs are their principal source of funds.
The report lists cases in which prospective adoptees were falsely reported to have been abandoned by unknown parents, in order to prevent US embassy officials from verifying that the parents had not been coerced or paid, a requirement under the US-Vietnamese agreement on international adoption. In some cases, the report alleges babies were put up for adoption by hospitals when parents were unable to pay their medical bills.
In other cases, the report says parents were promised payments averaging more than US$300 in exchange for signing papers putting their children up for adoption.
The US’ current agreement on adoption with Vietnam is scheduled to expire on Sept. 1. The US insists that a future agreement allows DNA checking for the parents of the adoptees and spontaneous US investigations without the consent of provincial governments, conditions the Vietnamese side has refused to meet.
The US embassy also issued a recommendation yesterday that US parents not initiate any new adoption procedures from Vietnam.
The US issued over 800 adoption visas to children from Vietnam last year and has issued more than 300 so far this year.
An American scientist convicted of lying to US authorities about payments from China while he was at Harvard University has rebuilt his research lab in Shenzhen, China, to pursue technology the Chinese government has identified as a national priority: embedding electronics into the human brain. Charles Lieber, 67, is among the world’s leading researchers in brain-computer interfaces. The technology has shown promise in treating conditions such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and restoring movement in paralyzed people. It also has potential military applications: Scientists at the Chinese People’s Liberation Army have investigated brain interfaces as a way to engineer super soldiers by boosting
Indonesian police have arrested 13 people after shocking images of alleged abuse against small children at a daycare center went viral, sparking outrage across the nation, officials said on Monday. Police on Friday last week raided Little Aresha, a daycare center in Yogyakarta on Java island, following a report from a former employee. CCTV footage circulating on social media showed children, most younger than two, lying on the floor wearing only diapers, their hands and feet bound with rags. The police have confirmed that the footage is authentic. Police said they also found 20 children crammed into a room just 3m by 3m. “So
A highway bomb attack in a restive region of southwestern Colombia on Saturday killed 14 people and injured at least 38, the latest spate of violence ahead of next month’s presidential election. Authorities blamed the attack in the Cauca department — a conflict-ridden, coca-growing region — on dissidents of the now-disbanded FARC guerrilla army, who have been sowing violence across the country. “Those who carried out this attack ... are terrorists, fascists and drug traffickers,” Colombian President Gustavo Petro said on social media. “I want our very best soldiers to confront them,” he added. The leftist leader blamed the bombing
From post offices and parks to stations and even the summit of Mount Fuji, Japan’s vending machines are ubiquitous, but with the rapid pace of inflation cooling demand for their drinks, operators are being forced to rethink the business. Last month beverage giant DyDo Group Holdings announced it would remove about 20,000 vending machines — about 7 percent of their stock nationwide — by January next year, to “reconstruct a profitable network.” Pokka Sapporo Food & Beverage, based in Nagoya, also said last month it would sell its 40,000-machine operation to Osaka-based Lifedrink Co. “The strength of the vending machine
RSS