INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Bibi Hasenaar has had two lives
One began in November 1976, when she wasaboutfour, arriving in the Netherlands to meet her adoptive parents
Babu was there, too.Her other life appears only in fragments
Her only memory of their mother is her long black hair
But of the flight out of Bangladesh, she remembers every detail
slowly recounts the long journey that changed her life.The plane, which felt huge to Hasenaar, who was malnourished and small for her age,
was empty save for the four or five children who were being escorted for adoption
At one point, Hasenaar became hysterical
The children were taken to await the arrival of their adoptive parents
Hasenaar began to cry inconsolably.Hasenaar arrives at Schiphol airport with her brother Babu and other childrenAfter three days with her
new family, she was still in distress
second adoptive family, who had only asked for one child, and by her birth mother, who she believed had given her up
Life in the Dutch village was completely alien
So I think that was for my Dutch parents the most difficult part
ornaments; in a field behind her house, there are two camels
She shows off a huge scar on her thigh where one of them recently bit her.A graphic show Dutch adoptions of Bangladeshi children, 1971 to
1984Hasenaar left home at 17 to be with Herman, whom she married in 1991
Hasenaar began receiving letters from a person in Bangladesh claiming to represent her birth mother
The letters claimed that she had never intended to give her children up for adoption
Several letters arrived bearing the notary stamp of a Dhaka-based lawyer, asking for money to help with the case
After posting back the equivalent of a few hundred pounds in cash, Hasenaar heard nothing.She contacted Wereldkinderen (World Children), the
charity that had facilitated her adoption in 1976 while operating under the name BIA
I was young and ignorant, and my adopted parents were always talking positively about the organisation, so I trusted them
With few options left, Hasenaar focused on raising her family
Then, in the summer of 2017, a friend sent her a link to a documentary
It was about children who had been adopted in the Netherlands, and a man who had discovered he had been taken from Bangladesh without his
Hasenaar could barely take in what she was seeing
her adoption papers, which she had never closely examined before
She realised her date of birth was wrong, and she was listed as having arrived alone
I always felt that there was nobody in the whole world who wanted to take care of me, or who was missing me
Tongi region 40 years earlier
camp for refugees of the 1971 war
The brutal nine?month conflict, during which East Pakistan broke away and became an independent state, was one of the bloodiest of the 20th
that razed entire villages to the ground.A map showing the location of three camps for people displaced by the 1971 warBy the time
Bangladesh had won independence in December 1971, hundreds of thousands had been killed and millions more displaced
To resettle slum dwellers in the capital, three camps were set up; one of these was Dattapara
In the years after the charities left, the camp grew into a slum, and a sense of despair still lingers today: a high school sits on the mass
run by Terre des Hommes Netherlands (TDHn), a European NGO
Local families claim that in the 1970s the programme was used as a cover to kidnap young children for adoption abroad
TDHn denies these allegations, saying it was not and has never been an adoption agency.Gates bearing the letters TDH
They were incredibly poor
young children.Her situation was distressingly common, and like most of her neighbours, she survived on handouts from local charities,
including TDHn, which distributed food and rations from a building inside the camp.In autumn 1976, when Kader was 16, his mother was
two youngest children, Bablu and Rahima, aged five and four
work for TDHn, kept returning with promises
Other mothers had done the same thing, they told her
The children would be fed and educated, they said
The home could provide medical care
being assured she could visit and that the children would be returned to her when they were older, Begum finally gave in.The following week,
In the third week, they said her children had been taken to another location
In a state of panic, Begum demanded to see Bablu and Rahima
In response, Kader said she was threatened with a gun and told never to come back
Begum would later learn that her children had been taken to the Netherlands for adoption and now went by their middle names, Babu and Bibi
She never saw them again.My mother was a fighter
Trying to find ways to get her children back consumed her everyday life Kader, 63, suffered a stroke in March 2023 that left him unable to
move properly and struggling to breathe
But when describing what happened to his mother, fury enters his voice
so she could report what had happened to her children
Once energetic and joyful, she became withdrawn and fell into depression
I was a lot older than my siblings and it was often my job to look out for them, so when they were taken I felt partly responsible
There were three of us siblings, and then all of a sudden it was just me
It was a conversation fractured by translation issues, but laden with emotion
Hasenaar wept as her brother told her their mother had died
A few weeks later, the siblings were reunited at the airport in Dhaka
They even dressed and spoke in the same manner
When we reached the village where I am from, everyone came out to welcome me
Photograph: Judith Jockel/The GuardianIn finding out the truth about her mother and the circumstances of her adoption, Hasenaarhas also
unearthed details of a scandal, mired in the turmoil and poverty of Tongi, and decades-old allegations of an adoption ring
Samina Begum was one of dozens of mothers who made the allegations against TDHn
All claim they handed over their children believing it to be for temporary care, only to discover that they had vanished abroad to be
to be an adoption agency, which it was not
The group of mothers that Begum had convened protested outside TDHn offices
work in international child protection
It is a simple, brutal trick played on families in desperate circumstances
David M Smolin, an expert on illegal international adoption practices, who lives in Alabama.Smolin cites examples in Nepal and Cambodia
their agitated state that something was seriously wrong
But it took six years for the Smolins to establish the truth
consulted did not seem to care
children were gone and asked for them back, she was told that the orphanage had spent a lot of money on the care of the children, and named
an impossible sum that would be required for her to get them back
reunite with their mother, and Smolin has since dedicated much of his career to exposing enforced adoption.Nigel Cantwell has worked on
international adoption for more than 30 years
Others include falsely informing a mother their child is stillborn, obtaining consent by manipulation, falsifying documents, and
perceived problems of newly decolonised countries, and to war and disaster
pattern identified by Cantwell, moving from emergency response to a business model
One horrifying element of the 1971 conflict was the use of ethnic rape as a weapon of war against Bengali women, leaving thousands of forced
pregnancies in its wake.The government responded by introducing emergency legislation that permitted late-term abortions, and the Bangladesh
In 1972, hundreds travelled to do just that, arriving in a chaotic country assembling itself from the ruins of war
Prospective parents would arrive at orphanages and pick their baby from a row of cots.Within a few years, there were a number of charities
formally organising the adoption of Bangladeshi children to foreign countries
Soon, older children were routinely available for foreign adoption, too
Adoptees were often transferred to the care of new parents with little more than a piece of paper confirming their name and orphan status
In other cases, charity workers were apparently open about making up the details of children in their care, to hurry along the bureaucratic
Children were sent to countries including Canada, the US and the UK
Official figures show that between 1975 and 1979, 454 children were adopted in the Netherlands alone
Many, like Bibi Hasenaar, came from Tongi.What went wrong with the Dutch adoptions during this period remains the source of major dispute
between the former country director of TDHn, Moslem Ali Khan, who also worked for BIA, and the dozens of families who maintain their
allegations that he and TDHn stole their children, claims that they both deny.Several of the mothers still living in Tongi repeat these
claims when interviewed for this article
One woman, now 80, says she was tricked into giving her son over to men claiming to work for TDHn, and has not seen him since
Another witness claims to have seen a truckload of children being driven away from Tongi in the summer of 1977 as parents chased the
One mother claims that her newborn baby went missing weeks after she turned down men claiming to work for TDHn; that she returned from the
arranges a stack of paperwork on the kitchen table
It comprises copies of legal papers and handwritten statements that the 93-year-old has kept for nearly 50 years, despite several
Oxford University, where he studied development economics, and contemplated becoming a rabbi before settling on farming and relocating to
It was there, spreading manure at his hill farm, that Preger describes hearing a voice telling him to train as a doctor.After completing his
medical training in 1972, Preger heard a radio appeal for the newly independent Bangladesh, where millions of refugees needed urgent care
Again, he felt a calling, and responded, going on to establish a clinic in Dhaka.In 1977, Preger was at work in his clinic when he heard a
famine and floods ravaging the country and was unable to look into it.On the day the two women appeared outside his clinic, he was with a
the names of 25 mothers, which he collected alongside a signed statement that they had all been tricked by TDHn into giving up their
children with promises that they would later be returned to them
first approaching TDHn itself and then the Bangladesh government
He says he contacted the Anti-Slavery Society (now Anti-Slavery International), based in the UK, but they could find no record of the
He contacted the Dutch government and the British Foreign Office, and, in 1978, he got in touch with two prominent lawyers in Dhaka, husband
and wife Nazmul and Sigma Huda, asking them to help him look into the claims of child trafficking.Once Sigma Huda started digging, she, too,
hundreds of families.Now 77 and still working as a lawyer in Dhaka, Huda was recently widowed after Nazmul died in February
TDHn said it has not seen evidence from Huda to substantiate her claims.To think there are hundreds of adopted Bangladeshis out there, who
after the children had gone, which indicate that many of the mothers were still fighting to get their children back
On every document, they claim one man as responsible for taking their children under false pretences: Moslem Ali Khan.Khan, also known as
Manzur, was country director of TDHn in Bangladesh from 1975 to 1982, and denies all these claims
and oversaw adoptions to the Netherlands
that TDHn was involved in adoptions, despite the transfer of lease taking place after the original allegations arose.Preger knew Khan well
According to Preger, Khan started a smear campaign against him after Preger went public with the allegations.Nearly 50 years on, Khan and
Preger maintain their claims against each other
Preger was deported from Bangladesh in 1979, when, as he describes it, he was presented with an extortionate visa fee he could not pay
statements by promises of cultivable land, cattle and other inducements, which Preger denies
they were never approached by any official as part of the investigation
The mothers were not interviewed as part of their investigation.In 1982, the Abandoned Children Order was repealed when a new nationalist
government came to power after one of a series of military coups
The practice of allowing foreign families to adopt Bangladeshi children was banned, and Khan was even briefly imprisoned, though never
charged, for his role in facilitating foreign adoptions
He said he had worked for both BIA, overseeing the intercountry adoption of children, which was not illegal, and TDHn
There were, he said, many charitable organisations in Bangladesh at the relevant time dealing with such adoptions
He said his only involvement had been in signing papers on behalf of theadopted childrenfor families in the Netherlands, and that the
allegations directed at him personally were false and had been fabricated by an individual motivated by a personal vendetta
he has never been convicted of any crime
Everything appeared to have gone quiet; families of the missing children began to accept they would never be reunited.But then, 40 years
later, something interesting happened
A combination of social networking sites and DNA testing reignited interest in the cases
By the late 2010s, adoptees in the Netherlands began finding they had relatives in Bangladesh, and that the stories their adopted parents
had been told about them being abandoned or orphans were untrue
A number of them launched legal action.Such was the scale of the complaints, the Dutch government held an inquiry and temporarily paused all
across the system, from Bangladesh but also Brazil, Sri Lanka and Indonesia.TDHn also conducted a fresh investigation in 2019, which
allegations that local TDH Netherlands staff were involved in misleading parents to give up their children for adoption have never been
As of 2019, TDHn has been working with and providing financial support to a charity that works to reunite adoptees with their relatives in
Bangladesh.For Bibi Hasenaar, the various investigations and inquiries are meaningless
She no longer has trust in official bodies or systems
In 2018, she filed a case against the Dutch government, TDHn and Wereldkinderen for their alleged involvement in her fraudulent adoption,
However, after the government inquiry in 2021, the state dropped its claim that her case breached the statute of limitations
As a result, Hasenaar is appealing, and expects a decision this autumn.Wereldkinderen, which BIA merged with in 1983, told the Guardian they
He was in a coma, but I spoke to him anyway
It breaks my heart that we lost out on so much
My only wish is that I could have met my birth mother in person
This article first appeared/also appeared in theguardian.com
