Mrs Rani Hong, abducted at the age of 7, and today President of a Foundation, addressed the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences about her ordeal.
“Help Victims of Human Trafficking – The Best Practices of Reintegration, Legal Aid and Compensation” was the title of a Seminar, organized at the Pius IV Casina in Vatican, from November 4-6, 2017. It ended with a press conference on November 6, with Monsignor Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, Chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences; Mrs Margaret S. Archer, President; Mrs Jami Solli, lawyer, co-organizer and Founder of “the Global Alliance for Legal Aid,” and Mrs Rani Hong, President of the Tronie Foundation for the fight against trafficking and slavery. Mrs Hong herself was abducted from her parents in India when she was seven, and was reduced to slavery and abused in another Indian state. Then, she fell sick and was sold again and presented for international adoption in the United States and Canada. She told her story in English.
Then, what she called “God’s miracle” took place, when she found her mother again
Today she shares what she calls her “hope”: with her husband she founded the Tronie Foundation, “to change the world.”
She thanked Monsignor Sanchez Sorondo and Mrs Archer especially for the occasion to represent the voiceless: “Ihon speak for those who don’t have a voice, I ask you for your help (. . .). I have a name, a face, a father and a mother, and I hope to inspire the nations to create laws and to implement them.”
She confided: I didn’t communicate; I had to learn to communicate again, my fundamental rights were taken away from me.”
“Thank you,” she said in a loud voice, “because the voice of survivors has been heard. I am here with the hope that one can elicit a change.”
She pointed out that the trafficking of children for adoption strikes especially “street children.” And a child is resold several times, said Mrs Hong. The sale of children “makes them pass from master to master” and this “to serve in the whole world or for the trafficking of organs.” And this trafficking of children, far from diminishing “is growing.”
She asked that public opinion be sensitized to the problem, especially families that wish to adopt a child internationally.
Translation by Virginia M. Forrester
JF
