A baby is exchanged for an Italian woman
THE VICTIM SELLS ITS OWN SELLERS
New deals in Elbasan for the disappearance of Albanian children by religious missions
A baby is exchanged for an Italian woman
Between parents and missionaries, contracts for the renunciation of maternity were drawn up p. 7
THE VICTIM SELLS
ITS OWN SELLERS
By Myshtak XHEMALI
The sale of Albanian infants
has become one of the most serious
scandals in the young republic —
similar to the staggering enrichment
of government officials, who, in
addition to the wealth they already
hold in Swiss and American banks,
also rely on the criminal business
of children. Just as cocaine, human
cigarette smuggling and other such
schemes, it seems that trafficking in
babies has also become a source of
profits of the same kind. Certain
companies with propaganda centers
in Albania have turned this into the
most profitable form of child traf-
ficking, in a manner that arouses
no suspicion in public opinion, yet
it is deeply shaken if it learns that
children are later exploited for false
adoptions or other degrading busi-
nesses. If, in such a situation, inse-
curity continues, for these same
reasons, with the parents’ will every-
thing is legalized, despite the fact
that those same parents do not know
how to explain the pile-up of docu-
ments and justifications needed to
make the renunciation of maternity.
These documents ensure only the
share that belongs to the mother
from the sale of the child. On Fri-
day, in Elbasan, such a case occurred.
The transfer of a newborn baby,
36 hours old, from the mother’s
hands to the missionary’s hands,
who, in addition to signing the con-
tract of renunciation of maternity
with the natural mother, had also
secured the Italian father.
On Friday morning, at the doors
of the city, the sale of a child was
driving an Albanian mother from
Elbasan mad. Paid by a religious
mission based in the capital, this
family had spent sleepless nights,
waiting in the street for a taxi, which
in their language is called a “small
van,” but which in their understanding
was the vehicle by which the child
would be taken from the mother’s
hands and sent to Tirana, where the
documents were waiting that would
secure the human right to take him
along.
At the maternity hospital entrance,
along with the mother, there was
also a person of foreign appearance,
an elderly man dressed in priest’s
clothes. While the mother had given
birth and was waiting to take her
child out through the mattress into
the hands of the Italian missionary,
the man beside her appeared com-
pletely calm. According to the nurses,
this same man came and went often
in the maternity ward and seemed to
know everyone. When asked why he
was staying there, he replied that he
had come “to pick up his grandson.”
In the nursing records, the moth-
er’s name had been entered, but the
newborn child was not to bear her
surname. In the notebook of notes,
it had been arranged that the baby
would be registered under the sur-
name of an Italian man. Afterwards,
according to the staff, the rest would
be done in Tirana.
By lunchtime, the young woman
who had given birth, accompanied
by two other women, left the mater-
nity ward holding an empty blanket.
The child had been taken away ear-
lier. People from the area, asked by
the reporter, said they had not often
seen a mother leaving the maternity
hospital without her child.
Continues on page 7
Republicans in the campaign for the U.S. presidential elections, in support of the Kosovo cause
(In the photo: Senator John McCain with a group from the Kosovo movement in New York City yesterday, 11 February 2000)