26 January 2024 , 22:56
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This is the poignant moment a set of identical twins who were among tens of thousands of babies stolen from hospitals and sold are reunited after more than 20 years.
Amy Khvitia and Ano Sartania, who were born at a hospital in Georgia in 2002, now want answers as to what happened to the scores of tots since, after they only discovered each other by chance thanks to TikTok and a TV talent show. They've also finally met their birth mother, Aza, for the first time in more than two decades.
When Amy was at her godmother's house near the Black Sea watching her favourite TV programme, Georgia's Got Talent, she saw a girl who looked exactly like her - identical, in fact, but her family brushed it off. Amy said: "Everyone was calling my mum and asking: 'Why is Amy dancing under another name?'" Her mother said: "Everyone has a doppelganger."
Seven years elapsed and, in November 2021, Amy posted a video of herself with blue hair getting her eyebrow pierced on TikTok. Two hundred miles away in Tbilisi, Georgia, another 19-year-old, Ano, was sent the video by a friend. She thought it was "cool that she looks like me".
Ano tried to trace the girl with the pierced eyebrow online but couldn't find her, so she shared the video on a university WhatsApp group to see if anyone could help. Someone who knew Amy saw the message and connected them on Facebook. Amy instantly knew Ano was the girl she had seen all those years ago on Georgia's Got Talent.
Baby boy has spent his life in hospital as doctors are 'scared' to discharge him
Ano (L), Aza (C) and Amy (R) meet in Leipzig, Germany, where Aza now lives (BBC/World Service)And now they've met - and met their birth mother. The encounter was captured in a hotel in Leipzig, Germany, more than 2,000 miles from Tbilisi. They decided to confront their families and for the first time they learned the truth. They had been adopted, separately, a few weeks apart in 2002, according to BBC News.
Emotional footage taken in Leipzig shows the sister embracing their biological mum. Amy is visibly moved by the encounter, fighting back tears.
They were both born in Kirtskhi Maternity Hospital - which no longer exists - in western Georgia but, according to their birth certificates, their birthdays were a couple of weeks apart. Amy, though, knew then that they were twins. She said: "It was like looking in a mirror, the exact same face, exact same voice. I am her and she is me."
The twins have shared their emotional journey (BBC/World Service)Both sisters said they were upset with their family. Ano said she was "angry and upset with my family, but I just wanted the difficult conversations to be over so that we could all move on".
And, digging deeper, the twins found the details on their official birth certificates, including the date they were born, were wrong. It reports Amy's mother was unable to have children, and was told by a friendthere was an unwanted baby at the local hospital. She would need to pay the doctors but she could take her home and raise her as her own. Ano's mother was told the same story.
The twins traced their birth mother after finding a Facebook group dedicated to reuniting Georgian families with children suspected to have been illegally adopted at birth and she shared their story. A young woman in Germany replied, saying her mother had given birth to twin girls in Kirtskhi Maternity Hospital in 2002 and that despite being told they had died, she now had some doubts. The group, which has more than 230,000 members, was set up by journalist Tamuna Museridze in 2021 after she discovered she was adopted.
In 2022, the Georgian government launched an investigation into historic child trafficking. It told the BBC it has spoken to more than 40 people but the cases were "very old and historic data has been lost". The case features in BBC documentary Georgia's Stolen Children, which can be watched on iPlayer.