Congolese children were kidnapped, taken to an orphanage and put up for adoption in Belgium after their parents were tricked into sending them to a holiday camp, it has emerged.

Belgian prosecutors have officially asked "about 15" families for DNA samples from their adopted children in a bid to trace their biological parents. The adoptive families had thought the biological parents were dead.

“This is a drama. How do you explain such things to those children? Not to mention the pain that real parents must feel in the Congo ", Lorin Parys, a Flemish politician with an adopted son, told the Het Nieuwsblad newspaper.

The DNA demand applies to all Congolese children adopted in Belgium from November 2013 and comes as an 18 month investigation builds up a head of steam.

Prosecutors want the tests to find out the extent of the trafficking in Congolese children to Belgium, which infamously colonised a region including the present day Democratic Republic of Congo.

Investigators have identified at least four cases where a Congolese child adopted in Belgium had living biological parents thousands of miles away. The parents, who lived in the countryside, were convinced to send their children to a holiday camp in the capital Kinshasa. </s> Congolese children were allegedly kidnapped, taken to an orphanage and put up for adoption in Belgium after their parents were tricked into sending them to a holiday camp, it has emerged.

Congolese children were allegedly kidnapped, taken to an orphanage and put up for adoption in Belgium after their parents were tricked into sending them to a holiday camp, it has emerged.

Children adopted after parents were tricked, told they were going to 'holiday camp'

Belgian prosecutors have been asking around 15 families for DNA samples from their adopted children in a bid to trace their biological parents.

The adoptive families had been led to believe that the biological parents were dead.

Lorin Parys, a Flemish politician with an adopted son, said: "This is a drama. How do you explain such things to those children? Not to mention the pain the real parents must feel."

The demand for DNA applies to Congolese children adopted in Belgium from November 2013. Prosecutors want to find out the extent of any trafficking to Belgium, which colonised a region of Africa, including the present day Democratic Republic of Congo. Investigators have identified at least four cases where a Congolese child adopted in Belgium had living biological parents thousands of kilometres away.

The parents, who lived in the countryside, were persuaded to send their children to a holiday camp in the capital, Kinshasa. But the children were instead put in the Tumaini orphanage, which investigators found had recently been hastily closed. The children were then flown from there to Belgium. </s> Belgian officials have requested DNA samples from children adopted from the Democratic Republic of Congo to determine if they were falsely declared orphans and kidnapped, BBC reports.

The adoptive parents of around 15 children have been contacted, according to officials.

Prosecutors suspect the biological parents thought their kids were going to a holiday camp, not to an orphanage that has since been shuttered.

“There are only losers in this story and the judge will have to determine where the best interests of the kids lie,” Flemish MP Lorin Parys told the BBC.

While Congo has among the highest rates of orphaned kids, it stopped issuing exit permits for adoptions in 2013 amid trafficking concerns, according to BBC. Cases underway at the time were still processed.

Belgian authorities began investigating child-smuggling from the central African nation in 2017 when a report revealed four adopted children had falsely been declared orphans. Belgian journalists traced the cases back to biological parents who said their children never returned from what was billed as a youth camp. The kids, who were between the ages of two and four at the time, were instead taken to the Tumaini orphanage.

After the 2017 report, Belgian officials looked into all the country’s adoptions from the Tumaini orphanage. The 15 cases involved children who arrived between 2013 and 2015, and whose biological parents are believed to still be alive, BBC reports.

“They are different age ranges but the kids who’ve been here the shortest time have been here three and a half years, so they have all been integrated,” said Parys. “The parents here have done nothing wrong and of course the parents in Congo are devastated that they lost their kids under false pretenses.” </s> Image copyright Getty Images Image caption DR Congo has Africa's biggest number of orphans, from war and outbreaks of disease (file pic)

Belgian authorities have asked for DNA samples of children adopted from the Democratic Republic of Congo to establish if their biological parents are still alive, reports say.

They have contacted the adoptive parents of some 15 children to find out if the youngsters were kidnapped, according to Belgian newspapers.

Prosecutors suspect the parents thought they were sending their children to a Kinshasa holiday camp not an orphanage.

The orphanage has since been shut down.

"There are only losers in this story and the judge will have to determine where the best interests of the kids lie," Flemish MP Lorin Parys told the BBC.

What happened to the children?

Thousands of African children have been adopted in recent years from countries including Ethiopia and Uganda.

Fears of child-smuggling in DR Congo prompted the central African country to halt exit permits for adopted children in 2013. Some cases continued to go through because they had already begun.

DR Congo has one of the highest rates of orphaned children, but it emerged in 2017 that four children who had been adopted in Belgium had been falsely declared as orphans. All four had been aged between two and four when they were taken to Belgium from the Tumaini orphanage in Kinshasa.

A team of Belgian journalists traced the children's parents to a town about 850km (530 miles) from the capital Kinshasa. The parents said their children had been given the opportunity of going with a young organisation to a holiday camp but had never returned.

Why have new cases emerged?

Since the original four cases emerged, Belgian authorities have investigated a series of adoptions of children who came from the Tumaini orphanage. All 15 are thought to have come to Belgium between 2013 and 2015.

A spokesman for Belgium's public prosecutor said couples had been contacted with a request for an expert to conduct a DNA test on their adopted child, Nieuwsblad reports.

Belgium's judiciary has strong indications that the children's parents are still alive. Like the four other children, the parents are thought to have sent their youngsters to the Tumaini orphanage under the assumption that they were going to a holiday camp.

"They are different age ranges but the kids who've been here the shortest time have been here three and a half years, so they have all been integrated," explained Mr Parys, an MP with the N-VA party in the Flemish parliament.

"The parents here have done nothing wrong and of course the parents in Congo are devastated that they lost their kids under false pretences."

Belgian-Congolese lawyer Julienne Mpemba has been investigated for her role as head of the orphanage. Her lawyer was unavailable for comment on Tuesday, however he has in the past declared that she is innocent.

Georges-Henri Beauthier, a lawyer representing three of the adoptive families, said the DNA tests would not change anything.

"No-one I know is arguing that the children here came here in a network with false papers," he told Belgian public broadcaster RTBF. "What my clients have been calling for for two and a half years is that those who are the true heads of these networks are questioned and arrested and answer for their actions." </s> Belgian authorities have asked for DNA samples of children adopted from the Democratic Republic of Congo to... </s> Belgium was shaken by allegations over 15 Congolese children who were kidnapped, taken to an orphanage and put up for adoption by Belgian families after their parents were tricked into sending them to a holiday camp. The investigation was ordered to find out the extent of the child-smuggling network from DR Congo to Belgium, which infamously colonized a region including the present day Democratic Republic of Congo.

According to local Belgian news outlets, children's Belgian families were contacted as part of an investigation and were asked for DNA samples from their adopted children in a bid to trace their biological parents. The DNA demand applies to all Congolese children adopted by Belgian families from November 2013.

"This is a drama. How do you explain such things to those children? Not to mention the pain that real parents must feel in the Congo," Lorin Parys, a Flemish politician with an adopted son, told the Het Nieuwsblad newspaper, as reported by the Telegraph.

The Tumaini orphanage has been closed for some time. In recent years, thousands of African children have been adopted, including Ethiopian and Ugandans.

DR Congo has one of the highest rates of orphaned children. Four Congolese children who had been adopted in Belgium had been falsely declared as orphans, according to reports revealed in 2017. All four had been aged between 2 and 4 when they were taken to Belgium from the Tumaini orphanage in Kinshasa. </s> ABIDJAN (Reuters) - Villagers in Democratic Republic of Congo discovered the remains of two U.N. investigators and their Congolese interpreter who went missing this month in an area engulfed in a violent uprising, a government spokesman said on Tuesday.

Michael Sharp, a U.S. citizen, and Zaida Catalan, a Swedish national, had been in a group of experts monitoring a sanctions regime imposed on Congo by the U.N. Security Council when they disappeared in Kasai Central province.

In a statement issued in New York, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres confirmed that the remains of the two investigators missing since March 12 had been found in Congo and said the world body would conduct an inquiry.

Villagers found the bodies of two Caucasians and one Congolese not far from where the experts group vanished, according to the government.

Police informed the authorities in the capital Kinshasa on Monday and a team including the provincial police commissioner was sent to the scene to identify the bodies.

“It’s now a certainty. It is the two investigators. We identified the third body in the grave with them as their Congolese interpreter,” Communications Minister Lambert Mende told Reuters.

John Sharp, the father of Michael, posted on his Facebook page that the bodies of two Caucasians had been found in a shallow grave, saying that there was a “high probability” that it was the U.N. officials.

“This is a message I hoped never to write,” he wrote, adding that DNA tests and dental records would be used to confirm the identities of the bodies.

Guterres said the United Nations would cooperate with Congolese authorities in searching for the four Congolese nationals who accompanied the U.N. officials.

“In case of criminal acts, the United Nations will do everything possible to ensure that justice is done,” the U.N. chief said.

The Swedish Foreign Ministry said it would not comment on the incident as it was being handled by the United Nations.

Congo’s Kasai Central region is the epicenter of the Kamuina Nsapu insurgency that has now spread to five provinces in the loosely governed Central African country.

The Kinshasa government said earlier this month the two U.N. officials had fallen into the hands of unidentified “negative forces” along with four Congolese who were with them near the village of Ngombe in Kasai Central.

“Going to places where few people go, asking questions that few people ask, finding out the truth, this is the work of United Nations experts,” said Emilie Serralta, a former coordinator of the U.N. Congo group. “This is how the reports and recommendations (guiding) the Security Council are written.”

Kamuina Nsapu militants pose an increasingly serious threat to President Joseph Kabila, whose decision to stay on beyond the end of his elected mandate last December has sent ripples of unrest across the vast mining powerhouse.

U.N. figures indicate that over 400 people have been killed in violence in which militants have been blamed for atrocities and government forces are accused of targeting civilians.

Local officials said on Saturday militiamen decapitated about 40 police officers in the deadliest attack on the security forces since the uprising began last year. </s> LUC VAN BRAEKEL VIA FLICKR

Delphine Boël’s has been declared inadmissible by the Belgian Court in Brussels, and thus, Belgian King Albert II cannot legally be declared Delphine’s father. Her legal father remains Jacques Boël, despite the fact that DNA-testing has proved that he is not her biological father.

“A biological bond alone does not suffice to prove a father-daughter relationship. There are other components, like the integration into a family,” the judge argued. Jacques Boël has always acted like Delphine’s father, she carries his name, and she grew up in the Boël family.

This decision from the court blocks Delphine’s next step in the procedure; DNA-testing on King Albert II to prove that he is her biological father.

Delphine was born in 1968 as the daughter of Baroness Sybille de Selys Longchamps and was officially recognised by her mother’s husband Jonkheer Jacques Boël (of which the English equivalent would be Esquire). The King made a reference to a crisis ‘thirty years ago’ in the 1999 Christmas speech but has otherwise remained silent on the subject. Delphine Boël has always claimed that it was not about any inheritance, as her legitimate father is much richer than the King.

In 2013, Delphine summoned King Albert and two of his children, the Duke of Brabant, now King Philippe and Princess Astrid of Belgium, the Archduchess of Austria-Este to court in hopes of obtaining DNA for testing purposes. The King enjoyed immunity at the time, but his abdication in July 2013 opened the way for a new procedure.

She ran into some trouble when she wished to revoke the paternity of Jacques Boël, as this had to be done before you turn 22 or within a year of learning that your parent is not actually your parent. Belgium’s constitutional court has now ruled that the right to know who your biological parent is, is more important than the age limit. </s> A total of 15 children of Cypriot origin or with connections to Cyprus reported missing between 2007 and 2017 are listed on Interpol’s ‘yellow notices’ for missing persons, Phileleftheros reported on Saturday.

The majority are cases of children of divorced or separated parents, where one parent is believed to have left with the child. Also on the list are children from Cyprus with a migrant background, the newspaper added.

The newspaper article coincides with International Missing Children’s Day that is marked every year on May 25. The issue has become even more poignant in view of the disappearance – in 2016 and 2018 — of two children victims of a self-confessed serial killer who went by the online name of Orestes and is currently in police custody.

The body of eight year old Elena Natalia was found in a suitcase at Kokkini Limni in Mitsero. The search continues for the body of six year old Sierra at Memi lake near Xyliatou.

Orestes has reportedly confessed to killing the two little girls, their mothers and three other women. Five bodies — of four women and one child — have been recovered so far.

Police have come under fierce criticism for their handling of the disappearances. The Justice Minister resigned and the police chief was sacked, while an investigation is underway.

The cases also highlighted the need to update a cooperation protocol signed in 2013 between the Justice Ministry and the Association for the Prevention of Violence in the Family and the Hope for Children – CRC Policy Centre to ensure cooperation in the event of children reported missing.

Hope for Children has highlighted the urgent need for more effective implementation of protocols, noting that this can save lives.

It has also urged police to use the Child Abduction Alert for the mass and coordinated publication of photographs and information of disappeared children that operates within the framework of the European help line for missing children on 116000. These procedures were not used for either Elena Natalia nor for Sierra.

Thousands of children are reported missing worldwide every year. According to the International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children, about 800,000 children are reported missing in the US every year, another 100,000 in Germany, 45,000 in Brazil, 20,000 in Australia and 15,000 in Russia.

International Missing Children’s Day

 In 1983, U.S. President Ronald Reagan proclaimed May 25 “National Missing Children’s Day.” The proclamation followed the 1979 disappearance of a six-year-old boy, Etan Patz, on his way to school in New York City. The case generated widespread indignation, and concern for missing children rose across the nation. Since the United States began remembering missing children in this way, other countries around the world have adopted similar commemorations.

May 25 is now widely known as Missing Children’s Day, with the forget-me-not flower as its emblem. In 2001, May 25 was first formally recognized as International Missing Children’s Day (IMCD), thanks to a joint effort on the part of ICMEC, Missing Children Europe and the European Commission.
Belgian authorities order DNA tests of children recently adopted from the Democratic Republic of the Congo following reports that several parents thought they were sending their children to a Kinshasa holiday camp not an orphanage.