Family Forum / Parenting / Adoption / April 2008

Vietnam says it's stopping its child-adoption program amid U.S.
charges of corruption, including baby sales.

It's believed the move will spur an increase in adoptions in other
Southeast Asian nations, especially China, where parents often are at
wits end to find ways to secretly "do away" with unwanted births of
girls.

Dr. Zhao Baige, Vice Minister of National Population and Family
Planning Commission of China (NPFPC) yesterday told a visiting group
of pediatricians from Bangladesh that Vietnam's move might be "just
the ticket" for stressed Chinese parents who want boys, in keeping
with Chinese child custom and culture.

"We in China must stop putting so many infant girls to death," Dr.
Zhao said.  "After all, they are considered half-human in China, and
our international trading partners might take offense at our peculiar-
but-time-honored customs.  Our only real problem with "femicide," as
we call it, is that these dead babies will never grow up to be
professionals in our liberal nation -- prostitutes or casino girls or
Olympic comfort ladies."

Dr. Zhao told the pediatricians that impoverished Bangladeshis should
consider transferring their girl babies to foreign parents for
"reasonable recompense."

"Many Bangladeshi mothers with six, eight or ten children they can't
support could reduce their financial pressures by "breeding-for-
transfer" as we call it.

"We in China will undoubtedly change our reproductive laws to allow
this type of commerce," Dr. Zhao continued, "because to do so will
ease some our most urgent population control problems. However,
because of certain sensitivities, we will wait until after the
Olympics before accomplishing this."

----------------------------
"U.S. Allegations Prompt Vietnam to Halt Adoption Program"

By Vu Tien Hong
Associated Press
Tuesday, April 29, 2008; A11

HANOI, April 28 -- Vietnam is ending a child-adoption agreement with
the United States after being accused of allowing baby-selling and
corruption, officials said Monday.

The agreement was being considered for renewal but the two sides
remained far apart over revisions, said Vu Duc Long, director of
Vietnam's international adoption agency. The agreement is due to
expire Sept. 1.

In a letter sent to the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi on Friday, Vietnam said
it will stop taking adoption applications from American families after
July 1 but will continue to process applications of families who are
matched with babies before July 1.

The decision followed a report by the embassy alleging pervasive
corruption and baby-selling in Vietnam's adoption system.

The report lists cases in which infants were sold or birth mothers
were pressured to give up their babies. It also describes brokers
going to villages in search of babies for adoption.

Some American adoption agencies have been paying orphanage directors
for referrals, and others have bribed orphanage officials with
shopping sprees and junkets to the United States, the report says.

Vietnamese officials angrily denied the allegations, calling them
unfair. "They can say whatever they want, but we are not going to
renew it," Long said of the agreement.

The decision also will lead to the closure of 42 U.S. adoption
agencies operating in Vietnam, he said.

The U.S. Embassy said it respected Hanoi's decision but defended the
accuracy of its report.

Embassy officials began raising questions last year after their
routine investigations turned up widespread inconsistencies in
adoption paperwork.

They also noticed a suspicious surge in the number of babies listed on
adoption papers as abandoned -- now accounting for 85 percent of the
children. That makes it impossible to confirm that the infants were
genuine orphans or that their parents had knowingly put them up for
adoption, as required by U.S. law.

In the 18 months ending March 31, Americans adopted more than 1,200
Vietnamese children.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/28/AR2008042822303.html