The British BBC is showing a documentary on Friday about the fate of trafficked children in Georgia. It's about illegal adoptions, which apparently were practiced well into the 2000s. According to this, children were taken away from their mothers immediately after birth and sold into new families.
Using the examples of Amy Khvitia and Ano Sartania, the documentary traces the fate of those affected. According to the BBC, both were separated after birth and sold to different families. It wasn't until many years later that they met in person for the first time. And discovered that they were not the only victims of the illegal adoption practice.
At the age of twelve, Amy Khvitia says she saw her twin sister on television when she took part in a talent show. She was amazed at the similarity, but the adoptive parents did nothing. Every person has a doppelganger, the mother is said to have said.
In November 2021, Amy posted a video of herself on TikTok, which the now 19-year-old Ano Sartania saw in Tbilisi. They finally found each other through further sharing and social media channels. And tried to reconstruct their past.
According to the report, the twins were born in a now-closed hospital in Kirtskhi, western Georgia. However, according to their birth certificates, they were born several weeks apart.
"I am her and she is me"
Both women not only look extremely similar, but according to the BBC, they also suffer from the same form of hereditary dysplasia, certain bone deformities.
They met for the first time in the Georgian capital Tbilisi. “It was like looking in a mirror,” Amy remembers. “Same face, same voice. I am her and she is me." Her sister Ano said, "I don't like hugs, but I hugged her."
The twins decided to confront their families with the new knowledge. They learned they were adopted independently in 2002, several weeks apart. Then they discovered that their birth certificates were fake and their birthdays were incorrect.
Paid money, took it home
Amy's adoptive mother said that a friend had told her that there was an unwanted child in the hospital that she could take home by paying an undisclosed sum to the doctors. It was the same in Ano's case, according to the BBC. Nobody knew that they were twin children. The adoptive parents assured that they were not aware that they were acting illegally - even though money was paid.
Then Amy came across a Facebook group of suspected illegally adopted people.
The journalist Tamuna Museridze - herself a victim of the illegal business - founded the platform in 2021 to help those affected find their biological parents. The group has more than 230,000 members.
Meeting the birth mother in Leipzig
A young woman from Germany came forward and said her mother had given birth to twin girls at Kirtskhi Hospital in 2002. But the doctors claimed that they had both died. DNA tests then proved that the Facebook woman was Amy and Ano's sister and lived in Germany with the biological mother Aza.
Despite some reservations that her birth mother might have sold her, the two agreed to meet in Leipzig. The birth mother explains that she was ill after the birth and fell into a coma. When she woke up, they said the twins were dead.
Organized crime with a large network
Tamuna Museridze believes that from the 1970s onwards, the baby business was run by organized criminal groups that employed an army of helpers - from taxi drivers and corrupt administration officials to government politicians.
»The extent is unimaginable; up to 100,000 babies were stolen. It was systematic,” Museridze told the BBC. However, this number cannot be substantiated. According to her own statements, the journalist came to this assessment based on those allegedly affected who contacted her and national reports on illegal adoptions.
Museridze says that a number of parents have asked to be able to see their supposedly dead child again. The hospital staff then explained that the babies had already been buried.
Such an approach is reminiscent of cases of so-called forced adoptions in the GDR. There, too, children were taken away from their mothers in the hospital and later given to childless party officials. It was a kind of state-organized child trafficking, but as a rule no money flowed.
In Georgia, according to Museridze, the adoptive parents had to shell out about a year's salary for the child. According to the BBC, some of the children were also sold abroad - to Canada, Russia, Cyprus or to the USA and Ukraine.
Georgia tightened its adoption laws in 2005 to combat possible human trafficking. In 2022, the government commissioned an inquiry into child trafficking. Tamuna Museridze provided information, but there is no report yet.
Together with human rights lawyer Lia Mukhashavria, activist Museridze now wants to assert the right of those affected to have access to their birth documents. Because that is currently not easily possible in Georgia.
ala