Mother is looking for a daughter in anti-vaccination paradise Paraguay – ex-husband with children on the run
Created: 2022-06-05 06:19
A mother searches for her kidnapped daughter.
Her ex-husband and his new wife have gone into hiding in Paraguay as opponents of vaccination.
Interpol determined.
Asunción - The woman fights back tears.
"I'm a desperate mother," she said at a press conference in the Paraguayan capital of Asuncion.
Then her voice breaks.
"Have a heart for our girls and help us with the search." The woman from the Ruhr region has not seen her ten-year-old daughter for six months.
Her ex-husband fled to South America with the girl, his new wife and her daughter from her first marriage.
Somewhere in Paraguay they are hiding.
A saleswoman in the city of Encarnación assures that she spoke to the German wanted, according to the Paraguayan newspaper
ABC Color
.
"Please get in touch and end this terrible situation," the mother begs her ex-husband.
Anne Maja Reiniger-Egler from Germany holds the photo of her missing 10-year-old daughter during a press conference at the Attorney General's Office.
© Jorge Saenz/dpa
Mother is looking for a daughter in Paraguay: Her ex-husband, opposed to vaccination, is on the run with a new wife and children
According to the searching mother, the fugitive couple left a farewell letter when they left in November 2021.
In it they write that there is no future for the girls in Germany, that they do not want to have them vaccinated against the corona virus.
A few days ago, the fugitives published a video message.
"We are now being searched for worldwide, like criminals, like murderers, like criminals," says the man in it.
The woman adds: “We just wanted to protect our children.
We just want our kids to be okay and now you guys want to break up with us.”
Paraguay is very attractive to German opponents of vaccination
The police assume that the family went into hiding in one of the numerous German colonies in Paraguay, where they should be able to count on the support of like-minded people.
"There are very isolated German communities here, which makes the investigation so difficult," said the deputy head of the kidnapping unit of the Paraguayan police, Mario Vallejos.
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Paraguay can look back on a long tradition of immigration from Germany.
Already at the end of the 19th century, many Germans came to the fertile country to start a new life.
Elizabeth Nietzsche, the sister of the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, even founded a settlement with her husband called "Nueva Germania" (New Germania) and dreamed of an Aryan enclave in the Paraguayan hinterland.
During the corona pandemic, Paraguay then developed into a Dorado of vaccination opponents, lateral thinkers and right-wing conspiracy ideologues.
According to the Paraguayan migration authorities, 3,440 Germans settled in Paraguay last year alone.
The German embassy in Asunción estimates that around 26,000 Germans live in Paraguay.
Refugee family wanted internationally for child abduction
Paraguay is attractive as an immigration country because foreigners, especially from Europe, can easily obtain a residence permit and can also buy land or real estate.
Paraguay became interesting for opponents of vaccination during the corona pandemic because you could initially enter the country without proof of vaccination.
Many immigrants settle in traditional German communities like San Bernardino, Hohenau, and Bella Vista.
Recently, however, new settlements were founded by emigrants from German-speaking countries.
The immigration of declared opponents of vaccination is not met with approval by everyone in Paraguay anyway.
"Most of those who come are not vaccinated," said Hohenau Mayor Enrique Hahn.
"You have to know that there are laws here too." In the meantime, those entering the country had to prove that they had been fully vaccinated against the corona virus.
According to Hahn, however, opponents of vaccination partially circumvented the regulations by coming from Bolivia across the green border to Paraguay.
According to the public prosecutor's office, the fugitive family from Germany is now being sought worldwide for child abduction on the basis of an arrest warrant issued by the international police authority Interpol.
(Dennis Düttmann)
