00:00An Australian woman who was trafficked as a baby from Taiwan is protesting Taipei's decision not to reinstate her citizenship.
00:08I ask the minister to reverse the incorrect and immoral decision to revoke my citizenship.
00:17I am a victim, sold to another country as a small baby without any say in the matter.
00:24And now the government has effectively erased my existence.
00:29Vanessa Miles says she was only an infant when her grandfather gave her away and cancelled her Taiwanese citizenship.
00:36She visited Taiwan last year after discovering her link to the country.
00:40Miles says she's shown the Interior Ministry a birth certificate as proof of being born in Taiwan.
00:45But the ministry says there's no way to verify whether the document is valid.
01:07Miles was among more than 60 Taiwanese babies trafficked to Australia in the 1980s.
01:12To learn more about Vanessa Miles' story, our reporter Irene Lin sat down with her at the Taiwan Plus office
01:18in Taipei.
01:19So what exactly is the Interior Ministry's reason that they don't believe your birth certificate is valid?
01:28Do they think, are they factoring in the human trafficking?
01:32The Ministry of the Interior decided that because of all these complications with my, around my adoption,
01:39that actually I can't prove that I was born in Taiwan.
01:43In fact, in some sense I don't exist at all.
01:47Because they're saying that there is a different person with the same ID and the same name
01:51who exists in Taiwan in the system all these years where I don't exist.
01:56Your supposed grandfather revoked your household registration and your adoption papers in the local registration office.
02:06How do you feel?
02:08So my understanding is that in October, I think it was October the 12th, 1983,
02:14and he said actually we didn't send the baby overseas, we cancelled the adoption.
02:21This is very problematic because nobody at that office checked whether this was true.
02:27They didn't ask where is the baby.
02:30They didn't send any advice to Australia to say that this was happening.
02:35They just cancelled the adoption.
02:37But they can't cancel the adoption and say that I didn't exist when I have all this.
02:42It really hurts me that he did this and that all these years later
02:47I'm the one that has to prove what happened to me as a small baby.
02:51After all these years, do you still wish to have a relationship with your biological mother?
02:56Whoever my biological mother is, if it's Wang Limei or somebody else altogether, absolutely.
03:02I would love to meet them.
03:04I've had to realize that there are so many things, questions I have that may go unanswered in my life.
03:10But I think the citizenship thing, it shouldn't be an issue for me.
03:15It's unfair and unreasonable that on top of all the questions I have about my biological family,
03:20I now have to fight to take back something that is rightfully mine already.
03:26That was Vanessa Miles, an Australian adoptee who was one of more than 60 children trafficked from Taiwan to Australia
03:33in the 1980s.
03:34but we're not going to be the next conversation.
03:34I'm good at the next four friends.
03:35Thank you so much.
