Sat, Nov 21 2009

CHILD TRAFFICKING INCREASINGLY BIG PROBLEM FOR BULGARIA

Mon, Oct 02 2006 09:02 CET 435 Views

Child selling in Bulgaria produces serious revenue of up to $20 000, The Sunday Times wrote.

Nicola Smith, the author of the report, said the sale and adoption a one-month old baby was nearly arranged in Bulgaria's second biggest city of Plovdiv.

Smith went to the Roma-populated neighborhood of Sheker mahala and easily found an old lady offering her grand-daughter for sale, Sunday Times said. "The old woman may have held the infant gently, but her face was hard. This, after all, was business", Smith said.

Baby trafficking was occurring in Bulgaria for the past 10 to 15 years and recently became a growing problem, Sunday Times said. Babies were sold before they were even born.

Some women got pregnant only to sell their babies, the article said. Others gave their babies to `loan sharks' instead of paying back their loans. Still others became victims of dealers, Sunday Times said.

Many of the babies were sold in Greece where lawyers arranged the adoption papers.

Pregnant women were usually taken to the Bulgarian town of Kulata, located at the Greek border. The dealers took the women through the border and hide them until they gave birth.

Prices could reach $ 20 000 or more, but the mothers were paid less than one tenth of the price. On occasions dealers would cheat giving the mothers nothing, the report said.

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