A trafficking verdict leaves Singapore with a question nobody wants to answer

An Indonesian court has done the easy part: it convicted 19 people in a baby-trafficking case and declared the criminal chapter closed. The harder question, naturally, is what to do with the children at the centre of it all. At least 34 babies were procured and sold for adoption, and at least 12 were sent to Singapore. That leaves two governments, several lawyers and a group of anxious parents staring at the same uncomfortable pile of facts.

For the adoptive parents in Singapore, the verdict has not brought relief so much as a fresh round of uncertainty. One parent, David, said he and his wife had no idea the child they adopted from Indonesia might have been trafficked, and that they had carried out their own checks. He also said they had gone through multiple Singaporean government procedures that, in his view, should have detected the fraud. His request is modest enough: a decision, and soon. Bureaucracies, however, are rarely built for speed when the answer might upset someone.

Indonesia’s foreign affairs ministry says several issues still need examination, including the children’s legal status, the identities of their biological parents and the proceedings in Singapore. Singapore has not yet answered the BBC’s latest questions. So the children remain in a kind of administrative limbo, which is a polite phrase for saying that everyone involved prefers the problem to belong to someone else.

The legal mess begins with the paperwork. During the trial, it emerged that the trafficking ring had used false information to obtain birth certificates and family cards, even listing members of the ring as the babies’ mothers. Local officials issued the documents on that basis, which raises the awkward possibility that the first line of defence was not much of a defence at all. If the system can be manipulated so easily at the point of entry, one wonders what exactly the checks were checking.

Whether the adoptions in Singapore can be annulled is another matter entirely. Lawyers told the BBC they had never heard of an adoption order being revoked there. Under Singapore’s framework, adoption orders are generally treated as final, precisely because there are supposed to be substantial safeguards before they are granted. If the government seeks revocation, courts could weigh the psychological impact on the child, the time spent in Singapore and the conditions the child would face in Indonesia. The fact that the babies are believed to have entered Singapore between 2023 and 2025 means the oldest is now at least three years old.

There is also the small matter of identity, which in this case is not small at all. Indonesian authorities have not identified all the biological parents, so some children may have nobody to return to. At least eight other babies rescued from the trafficking ring are already in an orphanage in Bandung. Ai Maryanti, a commissioner with Indonesia’s independent child protection commission, said the children’s true identities have not been established and that their best interests have not yet been properly considered. She argued that trafficking victims should be returned, but also warned against pretending that Singaporean adoption paperwork settles the moral question.

That leaves the case where cross-border compassion meets legal bureaucracy and neither seems especially effective. Ni Made Martini Puteri of the University of Indonesia noted that there is little public data on what happens to trafficked children within Indonesia after rescue, and even less on children trafficked abroad. She argued that if a child has known only life in Singapore since infancy, remaining with adoptive parents may make more sense, though the child should still have the right to know the biological parents if they are later identified. Protection, she said, should extend to adoptive parents too, since they may also have been deceived.

The verdict has settled the criminal case but not the human one. Singapore and Indonesia now face a choice between legal neatness and the messier business of children’s lives. The courts have spoken about the traffickers. They have said almost nothing about the babies, which is where the real test begins.

Written by Sandy van Dongen sandy.vandongen@alpineweekly.com