Mateja
RebeccaDo you know any stories about twins – perhaps twins lost and reunited?
Amy and Ano are identical twins from Georgia who were sold at birth.
Ano Sartania was 19 years old when a friend sent her a video posted on TikTok by Amy Khvitia. She looked just like her.
Ano immediately tried to track down the mysterious girl online, but couldn’t find her. She then shared the video with a group on WhatsApp.
Someone who knew Amy saw the message and connected them through Facebook.
Over the following days they discovered that they had a lot in common, but not everything made sense.
Both were born in Kirtskhi Maternity Hospital in western Georgia, but on their birth certificates the birth dates were a few weeks apart.
They couldn’t be sisters, or even twins, but there were simply too many similarities.
A few years later they found their mother through a Facebook group that searches for lost people.
The twins’ mother was told that her two daughters had died during childbirth.
Tamuna Museridze helped them in their search. She is looking for children who were taken from their mothers at birth and sold.
She discovered a black market in adoptions that stretched across Georgia. It operated from the early 1950s until 2005.
Amy and Ano are just two of thousands of babies who were stolen this way.
A similar story is told in Erich Kästner’s children’s novel Lisa and Lottie, perhaps better known as the movie adaption The Parent Trap.
Trade in newborns also took place in the former Yugoslavia in the 1970s and 1980s. More than 20,000 babies are said to have been sold at the time.
Around 70 Slovene parents are still looking for their allegedly stolen and resold children.
Points to Consider
- Do you know the story about the stolen boy from Šoštanj?
- Is selling children illegal?
- Do you know any twins?
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The original version of this article was published on 20th February.
Nejc
Saša
