Ten United States Baptists arrested trying to take thirty-three children out of earthquake-shattered Haiti say they were just trying to do the right thing.Every news story I see or hear about this just astonishes me. How anyone, any organisation, could think they didn't require permission to remove other people's children from their home country, even in the aftermath of the devastation Haiti has suffered, boggles me.
The orphanage where the children were later taken said at least some of the kids have living parents, who were apparently told the children were going on an extended holiday from the post-quake misery.
The church group's mission statement said it planned to spend only hours in the devastated capital, quickly identifying children without immediate families and then taking them by bus to a hotel in the Dominican Republic without permission from the Haitian Government...
There are many many agencies doing great work in Haiti, but it doesn't sound like this is one of them.
8 comments:
Wouldn't you want to get out too? These people are helping, give them a break. Don't be so petty.
I can't help but think a little prejudice is involved in that arrogance - in the form of anything that those adults could provide as Baptists from America to those children would be better than their Haitian family can. Y'know, cos material possessions and foreign values totally make up for the love and comfort of the family and environment you've known your whole life. While they may have had good but ignorant intentions, surely if you thought at all about the kids you would put your effort into reuniting kids with their families (rather than scooping them off the street without documentation, which is what I've read).
Anon.. it's because they were religious, that's why Julie is against their motives. Surely you'd have read this blog enough to know this... not to mention it was an evil AMERICAN church as well...
No, Anona, it's because these people - instead of helping a whole community, or at least parts of it - chose to take their children, illegally, so they could be brought up as Americans. Don't you think that's a little creepy and exploitative?
It ignores the Haitian community that these kids came from - and all the adults and children who weren't adoptable, and are still in need. The solution is not to take children away, if their parents can't support them; it's to help their parents be able to support them.
How are they helping? They're stealing children.
Most of the children weren't even orphans. Their parents were just desperate for help. Instead of helping them these people just took their kids.
It's revolting.
And the media coverage is pathetic. They're acting like these people are being held hostage in Haiti. What a load of shit.
Imagine if the roles were reversed. How do you think the US would respond if a bunch of people from another country just scooped up some kids and tried to take them out of the country n the guise of "helping" them and converting them to their religion?
Gosh I love it when people try to claim they can read my mind. What do you think I'm thinking right now, Anons?
Anyway, to be clear, I did think quite a bit about whether or not to tag this post with "Religion". In the end I decided not to because actually I don't think the fact that these people were religious, in this case Baptists, was the key motivator to their arrogance.
I know lots of religious people, even some who are Baptists, and my observations have been that some are arrogant and think they have the Way the Truth and the Light, but others are not. This leads me to conclude that it is not whether or not a person is religious that determines whether they are an arse.
From another Anonymous -
Look, anon, what say a group of Muslims came to South Auckland, Porirua, Aranui, where ever, scooped up some 33 kids off the streets, and whipped them off to a new life in Saudi?
Wouldn't you think we would be pretty antsy about it all?
I'm interested in how the language has changed from "child trafficker" to "child rescuer" overnight.
I've blogged about the Hague Convention on International Child Abduction here;
http://portiablog.wordpress.com/2010/02/03/child-traffickers-or-child-rescuers/
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