Little Maria's biological parents were found! She is, to the surprise of many, actually Roma, but from Bulgaria, not Greece. In a chain of events that moved quickly enough to raise questions about lingering unsolved missing persons cases everywhere.....ahem......Maria's parents were located, along with a number of lookalike siblings, and her DNA matches.
A lot of people from around the world are upset at the amount of attention this case attracted, stating that if the girl was not white, specifically blond and fair, no one would have cared. While those observations are probably, to an extent, true; there is another side to the coin. Suppose little Maria had not stood out in her crowd, and had gone unnoticed? There is a whole range of issues here that contribute to the unfavorable conditions that lead to generation after generation of poverty and crime. The family in Greece with whom Maria was found committed identity theft, the European version of welfare fraud, and informal, or ILLEGAL adoptions. Not that this illegal adoption was terrible, in an of itself; it probably was a lot better than being a Roma child in an orphanage, where one's only personal value arises upon being found compatible when an order for an organ transplant comes in. No kidding. It would come as no surprise to this blogger if missing foster children from Kansas turned up in Eastern European orphanages, for this very purpose. Would Kansas sell foster children by the pound, or by the dozen? Still, illegal adoption is a worldwide human trafficking problem, and that, combined with false ID's and birth certificates for multiple children who belong elsewhere is ultimately a disservice to the illegally "adopted" child, to the community, and to the world. It needs to stop, and Maria's case, which would never have become a "case" had she been olive enough to blend in with the rest of her community, has given this problem long overdue attention from the world.
The best action the European Union could probably take, after thousands of years of discriminating mercilessly against the Roma population, would be to insist upon education for all Roma children, and be just and equal about it. Getting everyone involved to come into compliance would not be easy, and it would seem to be another attack on Roma culture; can anyone remember when Nelson Mandela insisted that education become a priority, even for tribes, such as the Zulu, who felt that it was a cultural conflict? At this point, even those who opposed Mandela realize that this was insight on his part, not an attempt to dissolve cultures or destroy the identities of individual tribes. The Roma could best improve their destiny through education.
Meanwhile, Maria's real parents in Bulgaria and her not-so-real parents in Greece are under investigation. Her path is not yet determined, but she has a biological sister who appears to want very much to see her again. The task of finding Maria's biological parents first seemed like finding a needle in a haystack, but less than a week after Maria surfaced in the Greek Gypsy camp, her parents were found. Twenty years ago, this would not have happened so quickly, if at all. This leaves all of us to wonder why so many missing persons cases are still open in the United States, and if the United States actually tries to solve the missing persons cases that do not get solved by accident.
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