- Amy and Ano are identical twins who were split up and sold shortly after birth.
- They were victims of a child-trafficking market but reunited after finding each other on TikTok.
- Up to 100,000 babies may have been stolen from the 1950s to 2005, a journalist estimated.
Identical twins who were separated and sold shortly after birth reunited after finding each other on TikTok, the BBC reported.
The pair had a remarkable reunion after confronting their families about their seemingly mysterious similarities and eventually tracked down a sister and birth mother via DNA tests.
After traveling to Germany to meet their biological mother, Aza, they were told that hospital staff had falsely informed her that the twins died shortly after birth.
Their story led them to realize they were two of thousands of children stolen as part of a child-trafficking scheme in the former Soviet republic of Georgia, per the report.
The story of Amy Khvitia and Ano Sartania’s reunion began after Amy, then 12, noticed a girl who looked just like her on an episode of Georgia’s Got Talent.
“Everyone was calling my mum and asking: ‘Why is Amy dancing under another name?'” she said, per the BBC.
But her mother simply told her that “everyone has a doppelganger.”
Years later, 19-year-old Ano was sent a TikTok Amy had posted of herself and tried to track her down because she found it “cool” how similar they looked.
After connecting via Facebook, Amy reportedly “knew” it was the same girl she’d seen on the talent show seven years before.
After getting to know each other, they realized they had many similarities, including a genetic bone disease called dysplasia.
When they finally met in person, Amy said it was “like looking in a mirror” — and they decided to speak to their families about it.
They found out that they had been separately adopted in 2002 after their families had paid doctors for “unwanted” babies, the BBC reported.
Digging into their past, the twins joined Vedzeb, a Facebook group dedicated to reuniting families separated by suspected illegal adoptions.
Journalist Tamuna Museridze, who founded the group, estimated that up to 100,000 babies were stolen in Georgia from the 1950s to 2005 in a black market for adoptions.
Georgia began investigating child trafficking in 2022, but its government told the BBC that “very old and historic data has been lost.”
According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, “illegal adoptions violate multiple child rights norms and principles, including the best interests of the child, the principle of subsidiarity and the prohibition of improper financial gain.”
It adds that those “principles are breached when the purpose of an adoption is to find a child for adoptive parents rather than a family for the child.”
Business Insider contacted the Georgian Interior Ministry for comment.
