Child trafficking and abduction are terrible things. I get the feeling though that sometimes the media latches onto things in such a superficial manner. Take the example of “Maria“, a light skinned girl thought to be illegally resident in a darker skinned Roma community. There was another case in Ireland where in fact the dark skinned parents of a light skinned girl were wrongly suspected of abducting the girl. Amnesty Internation see the later case in particular as being part of an attitude of racism toward the Roma community.
I also have an issue with this kind of panic, what becomes of dark skinned children who are in families where their parents/guardians and/or siblings are lighter in colour? Are the media worried about those children?
What about children in abducted and forced into families where it isn’t possible to visually tell they aren’t really a part of that family? What does bbc news have to say about this? Why is the story of Maria a special case?