The children taken from home for a social experiment Denmark apologises

BBC 

8-12-2020

 Denmark's prime minister  has apologised to 22 children who were removed from their homes in Greenland in the 1950s in a failed social experiment.

They were taken to Denmark to be re-educated as "little Danes" who could later return to foster cultural links.

But when 16 did return they were put in an orphanage and many did not see their families again. Only six are now alive.

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One of the children, Helene Thiesen, who told her story to the BBC in 2015, said the apology meant everything.

Greenland is now an autonomous territory within the kingdom of Denmark and relies on Copenhagen for management of currency, foreign relations and defence, as well as the provision of a large annual subsidy.

A report on the case of the children, who were from Greenland's indigenous Inuit population, was published on Tuesday.

It was in 1951 when Danish authorities decided that one way to modernise Greenland would be to create a new type of Greenlander.

Teachers and priests were asked to identify children who could be re-educated and given a "better life" in mainland Denmark, and then return to be role models for Greenland-Denmark relations.

Many families were reluctant but some gave way, and in May 1951, the ship MS Disko set sail from Nuuk with 22 children on board.

Helene Thiesen, now 75 but seven at the time, said that her mother, who had been left alone with three children after their father's death, told her that Denmark was "just like paradise. You don't have to be sad".

On arrival the children were deprived of contact with relatives, had Danish-Greenlandic language difficulties and were placed in foster homes.

Helene only discovered why she had been taken away in 1996 when she was 52 years old, and she never rebuilt her relationship with her mother.

She said she had spoken to some of the other children at times and they "felt a sense of loss and a lack of self-belief".

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What did Denmark say?

The apology has been a long time coming, with previous governments feeling they had not been responsible for the original scheme.

But Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen changed that, saying in a statement: "We cannot change what happened. But we can take responsibility and apologise to those we should have cared for but failed to do."

She said she had sent a letter to each of the six children still alive with "an unreserved and long-awaited apology on behalf of Denmark".

"I have been following the case for many years and I am still deeply touched by the human tragedies it contains," Ms Frederiksen said.

Helene Thiesen told news agency Ritzau: "I am relieved that the apology has finally been delivered. It is really, really important. It means everything. I've been fighting for this since 1998."

Greenland's Prime Minister Kim Kielsen said co-operation with Denmark and Greenland had developed, adding: "Today we are equals, looking back on history together."

'Rights' and 'Wrongs'

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The Declaration of Human Rights was borne from the desire of many nations to embrace common values that underpin human life. The catastrophe of war and the horror of the holocaust made it imperative to attempt to bring order from chaos. I again pass by the question of enforceability. However as social attitudes evolve and change and scientific knowledge increases we must continually assess whether the actions of government, institutions and individuals accord with the generally accepted values of civilised nations. Those values find common expression in the Declaration.

The Report of the Child Sexual Abuse Royal Commission will describe the mistakes made by many institutions. Many of those mistakes are already documented in the case study reports previously provided to government. There will be 44 case study reports in all. They reflect a fraction of the occasions where some governments, institutions and individuals acted contrary to the "rights" afforded to children under the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The history of both Maralinga and Child Abuse in Australia make plain that "rights" matter. Fundamental rights once identified and adopted by a community cannot be easily cast aside. We cannot expound the virtues of a free and just society and express them through a statement of accepted "rights" if we do not endeavour to ensure that the actions of government and our many institutions are consistent with those "rights". 


14 -11-2017

Justice McClellan addresses Centre for Forensic Behavioural Science Seminar The Hon. Justice Peter McClellan AM, Chair of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, addressed the Centre for Forensic Behavioural Science Seminar at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne on Tuesday 14 November 2017.   Justice McClellan's speech is available here

Copyright © 2017 Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, All rights reserved. Our mailing address is: Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse GPO Box 5283 Sydney, NSW 2001 Australia

Aan de hoek van een ronde tafel; Lot genoten KInderbescherming en Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens

Het jaar 2017 is bijzonder, omdat dit het laatste jaar is dat de Wet bescherming persoonsgegevens geldt. Vanaf 25 mei 2018 is nieuwe Europese privacywetgeving van toepassing. Veel bedrijven en overheden zijn al bezig zich voor te bereiden op deze nieuwe wetgeving. Hierover voorlichting geven staat daarom bovenaan de agenda van de AP, zodat organisaties weten wat ze straks moeten doen.

Het reguliere werk van de AP gaat ondertussen ook door. De belangrijkste thema’s voor de AP in 2017 zijn naast de nieuwe EU-privacywetgeving: profiling, bijzondere persoonsgegevens en beveiliging van persoonsgegevens. 

Nieuwe Europese privacywetgeving

Vanaf 25 mei 2018 geldt er in heel Europa nog maar één privacywet. Dit is de algemene verordening gegevensbescherming (AVG). Organisaties krijgen onder de AVG meer verplichtingen. Zo kunnen zij verplicht zijn een  functionaris voor de gegevensbescherming (FG) aan te stellen.

Maar hier staat ook wat tegenover. Bijvoorbeeld dat organisaties met vestigingen in meerdere EU-landen nog maar met één privacytoezichthouder te maken krijgen.

Oliver O'Grady Rotterdam

Bambino Jesus: "and we elect them again and again"

" A fish rots from the head down"

“Er waren toen veel babyfarms, Ze verzamelden daar de baby’s en verkochten ze aan buitenlanders voor adoptie.”

Zembla  20 - 9 - 2017

21:15 NPO 2

Fika dossiers en Vreemdelingenwetgeving; Guilty of being Aboriginal

Blond Mokkel

SBS Australia
24082017
Sylvia Rowley

Thousands of Stolen Generation Children, some just babies, have had their lives permanently affected after they were charged and given criminal records under state government policies that systematically deemed it a crime to be an Indigenous child “in need of protection”

For decades, Uncle Larry Walsh lived with a mystery. As a Taungurung man who was
taken from his family as a young child, there’s a lot he doesn’t know about his early years. But one thing seemed particularly strange.

gladiolenuien en kampersteur

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'Up to society' to make reconciliation reality: Senator Murray Sinclair; Truth and reconciliation archives opened to University of Alberta under new partnership

"We did not deliver the [TRC's final report] to government. We recognized that government was going to be slow to respond … but we're not writing it for them, we are writing it for the rest of society," Sinclair said.  

"It's up to society to step up and take the actions that are needed."

Researchers at the University of Alberta will gain access to millions of documents contained in the archives of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission as part of a new agreement inked Thursday morning.

In signing the memorandum of understanding with the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation in Winnipeg, the university will become part of a network of almost two dozen institutions with digital access to Canada’s largest collection of material on the residential school system compiled over the lifetime of the commission.

The giant repository of categorized digitized documents will be available under strict privacy laws and established cultural-access protocols to ensure those accessing them do so with the utmost cultural sensitivity.

Some restricted documents may only be made available on a case-by-case basis and some may not be available at all.

Marilyn Buffalo, indigenous cultural adviser at the University of Alberta, said access to the archives is important for future generations to learn from the residential school era. 

“There’s always hope and as educators and elders we are always constantly building toward a better future for our future generations and that is going to take some changing of minds,” she said.

“If the average Canadian could take even one course or one week to learn about this era, I think that will be a life-changing experience for everybody.” 

University president David Turpin said allowing researchers to engage with the collection from Alberta would be “a catalyst for research and dialogue” and will also allow the university library to contribute its own archival material to the national centre.

“Reconciliation is something that’s a national initiative,” he said.

“This is a way to cement our relationship and ensure the archives … are available and used so we learn from this part of our history.”

Centre director Ry Moran said the partnership is an important step to ensure the work by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission continues to move forward.

“These partnership agreements are not just feel-good exercises,” Moran said in an interview earlier this week.

“They are actual commitments to do some very important work for this country’s healing.”

When the centre was established at the University of Manitoba five years ago, it served as a central collection point for records scattered across the country’s church and government archives.

Having now centralized the thousands of video statements, oral histories and documents, it’s job now, Moran said, is to ensure those archives are available to survivors and their families as well as researchers and educators “so that the country could become informed of the full history and the legacy of residential schools.”

“There is a collective need to preserve indigenous histories in solid ways and that isn’t just archival records, it’s also a matter of increasing our understanding of traditional knowledge,” Moran said.

“These survivors wanted Canadians to know and to understand what it was that they went through and make sure that never again would any child ever have to be exposed to that.

“Part of this journey of truth and reconciliation is combating a certain amount of ignorance and we as a country need to begin to not only be better informed but learn how to walk together, learn how to talk together and how to engage communities in meaningful dialogue to try and dramatically repair the damage that has been done.”

Turpin said the partnership was the latest example of the university responding to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s call for action that includes the creation of an indigenous advisory office and the development of an indigenous strategy that is currently underway. 

Also in development is a council of elders with representatives from several indigenous communities.

The office of the provost has also set up a fund to hire indigenous faculty and staff that has seen the number of indigenous faculty members increase to 39 now from 17 in 2015.

Kinderen met bloedarmoede

De Belgische katholieke kerk excuseert zich bij de metiskinderen voor de rol die katholieke ordes en instellingen hebben gespeeld in die koloniale periode. Dat heeft de Antwerpse bisschop Johan Bonny namens de Belgische bisschoppen gezegd tijdens een colloquium in de Senaat over de kwestie.

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Wie zijn de metissen?

In Congo, Rwanda en Burundi was er onder Belgische voogdij geen plaats voor metissen of "halfbloedkinderen", met koloniale blanke vader en een zwarte moeder. Blank en zwart moesten in die periode strikt gescheiden leven. Afrikaanse moeders van metissen werden onder druk gezet om hun kinderen af te staan. De "kinderen van de zonde" kwamen dan in katholieke instellingen terecht, zoals dat van de Witte Zusters in Save, in Rwanda.

Eind jaren 50 werden honderden kinderen uit die instellingen overgebracht naar België, waar ze in weeshuizen of bij pleegouders terechtkwamen. Ze groeiden in ons land op, maar hadden vaak geen geboorteakte. Hun nationaliteit werd hen ontnomen en ze hadden geen banden meer met hun ouders of familie in Afrika, van wie ze zelfs de identiteit niet kennen. Verenigingen van metissen vragen al langer dat de Belgische staat hun lijden erkent en acties onderneemt om iets goed te maken.

Bonny: "Verschil tussen iets vaag weten en persoonlijke verhalen"

De Belgische kerk heeft nu tijdens een colloquium met getuigenissen in de Senaat zijn excuses aangeboden aan de metissen. De bisschoppen roepen alle katholieke instellingen in België, Afrika en Rome op om alle documentatie die ze in hun bezit hebben en die metissen kunnen gebruiken om ouders of afstamming in Afrika terug te vinden ter beschikking te stellen.

"Het verhaal van de metissen valt middenin onze Belgische geschiedenis, en die van onze kerk. Deze kwestie is pas de laatste 2 jaar aan de oppervlakte gekomen. Er is een verschil tussen iets weten, en de dag waarop feiten naar buiten gekomen gesteund door cijfers en getuigenissen", zegt bisschop Bonny daarover in "De ochtend".

into the Arms of Strangers

Frank Meisler 






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Daderot, own work 

Irish Central

12-3-2017

The parish priest came for Delia Mulryan one dark winter’s night in 1944 in the little west of Ireland parish. Delia was seven months pregnant, the baby was created out of wedlock, 
...
It was a time before many automobiles in rural Ireland and dirt roads. The priest had an old fashioned bicycle with a crossbar on it.[...]

compleet

Irish Times

13-3-2017

‘Possible interference’ with birth certs at Tuam and Cork homes

Paper for HSE says deaths recorded at Cork home saw big fall with adoption legislation

Possible interference with birth and death certification at mother and baby homes in Tuam, Co Galway, and in Cork was highlighted as requiring further investigation in official HSE correspondence over four years ago.

A draft briefing paper for senior HSE management in October 2012, marked strictly confidential, noted that deaths recorded at the Bessboro mother and baby home in Cork dropped “dramatically” in 1950 with the introduction of adoption legislation.

“This...may point to babies being identified for adoption, principally to the USA, but have been recorded as infant deaths in Ireland and notified to the parents accordingly,” it said.

It added that further detailed study was required before this theory could be proven or disproven.

“The mother and baby home in Tuam was similarly involved with the provision of babies to the American adoptive market,” the memo said, and “there are letters from senior Church authorities asking for babies to be identified” for the US.

In both homes, the document added, there were issues of concern in relation to “medical care, accounting irregularities, and possible interference with birth and death certification which requires further investigation”.

“Children, if not mothers, who passed through these systems are likely to be still alive, and at the very least any knowledge of their histories should be fully investigated and made available to them if they so choose. While some time has passed, the possibility that illegal actions took place requires further investigation.”

Independent Galway West TD Catherine Connolly, who obtained the document, questioned whether the government and senior HSE management initiated an investigation when the research in the briefing paper came to light.

She said it was not clear if the document had come to the attention of the ongoing Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes.

Death certificates

Local historian Catherine Corless told The Irish Times it was “quite possible” that death certificates for Tuam were falsified, and that some of the almost 800 infants recorded as having died there may have been sent for adoption.

The briefing paper also refers to an element of “coercion” where women were forced to stay with their babies until well past the point that they were fit for discharge.

“During this time parents were charged with the upkeep of their children, but it appears now that adoptive parents were also charged for the upkeep of the same baby.”

In Bessboro a practice of recording more than one date for discharge of the mother – the first being geographical discharge, the second being removal from books – took place when the home was still receiving monies from central government for upkeep of the mother and infant despite the mother having left.

The memo, which was prepared by HSE staff during the McAleese inquiry into the Magdalene laundries, said women were “freely transferred” between county homes, unions, industrial schools, orphanages and psychiatric hospitals. It says the reasons behind this “institutional diaspora” are unknown.

wiki own work Daderot

Enda Kenny has said he wants to deal with the dark legacies of our past but following his statements this week, he’s still way off the mark, writes 

Sinead Pembroke.

11-3- 2017

177  comments

Last  Tuesday in Leader’s questions, Enda Kenny said, “no nuns broke into our homes to kidnap our children. We gave them up to what we convinced ourselves was the nuns’ care”.

After numerous reports since the 90s, after the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, the McAleese Report, and the subsequent redress schemes, this is what the Taoiseach had to contribute around the deplorable events that are being uncovered.

The Taoiseach and various other high profile government politicians have made similar remarks in relation to the financial crisis, and the subsequent recession in Ireland, that it was our fault that we partied too hard.

Here, we have it all over again: it’s our fault that children were incarcerated in these institutions.

Revisionism of our horrible history

Not only is this statement a complete revisionism of our very recent murky history of institutionalised welfare, but it completely lets the Catholic Church and the state off the hook.

Actually, they, (along with the state), did kidnap our children. Parents did not send their children to industrial schools because they wanted to; parents sent them there either because a court compelled them to, or because they had no choice, (as the state’s policy was to give child payments to the Religious Orders rather than directly to the parents).

I am the daughter of a survivor of a Christian Brother institution, and my grandmother certainly did not have my father sent to these institutions at will; in her case she was a widow who couldn’t afford to keep her children.

The same can be said for children born in Mother and Baby Homes.

Having interviewed people who were incarcerated in Magdalene Laundries, industrial schools and Mother and Baby Homes for numerous research projects, not only were these institutions intimately intertwined, but mothers who gave birth in these horrific places, (usually due to the fact they had no financial or familial support), had to give up their children unwillingly.

Not only were their children taken away from them, they were sold off to be adopted in places like the US, and many of the women ended up in Magdalene Laundries after they spent 18 months or so looking after the baby they were not allowed to keep.

Government must admit to legacy of Church-state relationship

Enda Kenny also said he wanted to be the Taoiseach to “once and for all deal with the sad legacies of the past”. With statements like the above, he is so far off from this.

Ultimately until he and other government politicians can admit to the deplorable legacy of the relationship between the Church and the political elite in Ireland, he will never fully deal with this.

What he didn’t say was that women were incarcerated in Magdalene Laundries or forced to give birth in Mother and Baby Homes because of the Catholic Church’s morals and values around sex and sexuality.

What he didn’t say was that children were incarcerated in industrial and reformatory schools because this was the Catholic Church (and the state’s response) to child welfare in Ireland, and the terms for sentencing a child to one of these institutions were widened in order to provide a continuous flow of children (and funding) for these institutions.

And this is the problem with inquiries conducted in a piecemeal fashion; they do not allow us to see the bigger picture.

We need to keep exposing the Church and state’s role in this system of abuse because it is only by doing this will we see an end to Catholic control, in legislation that controls women’s bodies, and in the domains of education and welfare.

Sinead Pembroke lives and works in Dublin as a researcher in TASC (Think-Tank for Action on Social Change).

"Als ik deze zaak win, kunnen andere geadopteerden veel slagvaardiger dat recht afdwingen"; Mijn adoptie was illegaal, juridische ouders voor de rechter

3-3-2-17 
De Stentor
T. van der Mee

P.,  die in 1980 als Braziliaanse baby illegaal geadopteerd is, heeft vandaag zijn Nederlandse ‘adoptieouders’ voor de rechter gesleept. Hij verwijt ze belangrijke informatie over zijn adoptie te hebben achtergehouden, waardoor ze de jarenlange zoektocht naar zijn biologische moeder ernstig hebben gefrustreerd.

De zaak is uniek , omdat - voor zover bekend - niet eerder een geadopteerde het recht op informatie over zijn geboorte, afkomst en identiteit via de rechter probeert af te dwingen bij zijn adoptieouders. 

,,Ik heb het recht om te weten waar ik vandaan kom, en mijn juridische ouders hebben de plicht om mij te informeren’’, zegt hij.


Volgens het VN-Kinderrechtenverdrag heeft ieder kind na de geboorte recht op inschrijving, een naam, nationaliteit en het recht om zijn of haar ouders te kennen. Zijn rechtszaak kan van groot belang zijn voor veel andere geadopteerden, die informatie willen over hun biologische familie. ,,Nu heb ik geen enkele manier om dat af te dwingen. Als ik deze zaak win, kunnen andere geadopteerden veel slagvaardiger dat recht afdwingen.’’

Complex

bron

Die zoektocht naar de biologische familie is nog complexer voor personen die in de jaren ’70 en ’80 op grote schaal illegaal zijn geadopteerd uit onder meer Latijns-Amerika en Indonesië. Zo ontdekte P dat zijn adoptie onderdeel was van stelselmatige, illegale adoptiepraktijken in Brazilië, uitgevoerd door Nederlandse bemiddelaars en ambtenaren in diplomatieke dienst.

Zijn ‘adoptieouders’ deden met valse getuigen aangifte van de geboorte van hun ‘eigen kind’. Met de valse geboorteakte werden reisdocumenten geregeld, zodat ze met Patrick naar Nederland konden reizen. Ze pleegden een ernstig misdrijf - verduistering van staat – maar werden uiteindelijk niet vervolgd.

Moeilijke positie
Zijn ‘adoptieouders’ ontkennen alle beschuldigingen. ,,Wij hebben hem alle relevante informatie gegeven’’, 
 betoogde de ‘adoptievader’ voor de rechtbank in Den Haag. ,,Meer hadden we niet. Ik erken dat we hem door de illegale adoptie in een heel moeilijke positie hebben gebracht. Tegelijk hebben we er alles aan gedaan om hem te helpen dat gat op te vullen.’’

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Volgens Patrick blijft illegale adoptie mogelijk zolang de geboorteregistratie niet gekoppeld is aan een geboorteakte. Hij heeft de VN gevraagd om dat aan te pakken. ,,Als de geboorteakte pas wordt afgegeven ná bewijs van een betrouwbare geboorteregistratie, kunnen die illegale praktijken niet meer plaatsvinden. Maar het heeft geen prioriteit bij de VN.’’