10 arrested Americans: We wanted to help kids
Source: Agencies |
February 2, 2010, Tuesday
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TEN Americans arrested trying to take 33 children out of earthquake-shattered Haiti say they were just trying to do the right thing, applying Christian principles to save Haitian children.
Haiti Prime Minister Max Bellerive said on Sunday he was outraged by the group's "illegal trafficking of children" in a country long afflicted by the scourge and by foreign meddling.
But the reality on the ground in this poor country - especially after the catastrophic January 12 quake - is that some parents openly attest to their willingness to part with their children if it will mean a better life.
It was a sentiment expressed by all but one of some 20 Haitian parents interviewed at a tent camp on Sunday that teemed with children whose toys were hewn from garbage.
"Some parents I know have already given their children to foreigners," said Adonis Helman, 44. "I've been thinking how I will choose which one I may give - probably my youngest."
Haiti's overwhelmed government has halted all adoptions unless they were in motion before the quake amid fears that parentless or lost children are more vulnerable than ever to being seized and sold.
Without proper documents and concerted efforts to track down their parents, they could be forever separated from family members able and willing to care for them. Bellerive's personal authorization is now required for the departure of any child.
The orphanage where the children were later taken said at least some of the kids have living parents, who were apparently told that the children were going on a holiday from the post-quake misery.
The Baptist church group's own mission statement said it planned to spend only hours in the devastated capital, quickly identifying children without immediate families and busing them to a rented hotel in the Dominican Republic without getting permission from the Haitian government.
Other child welfare organizations in Haiti called the plan reckless.
"The instinct to swoop in and rescue children may be a natural impulse but it cannot be the solution for the tens of thousands of children left vulnerable by the Haiti earthquake," said Deb Barry, a protection expert at Save the Children. "The possibility of a child being scooped up and mistakenly labeled an orphan in the chaotic aftermath of the disaster is incredibly high."
The church members, most from Idaho, said they were only trying to rescue abandoned and traumatized children.
"In this chaos the government is in right now, we were just trying to do the right thing," the group's spokeswoman, Laura Silsby, said at Haiti's judicial police headquarters, where she and others were taken after their arrest on Friday night trying to cross the border into the Dominican Republic in a bus.
Silsby, 40, admitted she had not obtained the proper Haitian documents for the children.
The children, aged 2 months to 12 years old, were taken to an orphanage run by Austrian-based SOS Children's Villages, where spokesman George Willeit said they arrived "very hungry, very thirsty."
"One (8-year-old) girl was crying, and saying, 'I am not an orphan. I still have my parents'," Willeit said.
The orphanage was working to reunite the children with their families
Haiti Prime Minister Max Bellerive said on Sunday he was outraged by the group's "illegal trafficking of children" in a country long afflicted by the scourge and by foreign meddling.
But the reality on the ground in this poor country - especially after the catastrophic January 12 quake - is that some parents openly attest to their willingness to part with their children if it will mean a better life.
It was a sentiment expressed by all but one of some 20 Haitian parents interviewed at a tent camp on Sunday that teemed with children whose toys were hewn from garbage.
"Some parents I know have already given their children to foreigners," said Adonis Helman, 44. "I've been thinking how I will choose which one I may give - probably my youngest."
Haiti's overwhelmed government has halted all adoptions unless they were in motion before the quake amid fears that parentless or lost children are more vulnerable than ever to being seized and sold.
Without proper documents and concerted efforts to track down their parents, they could be forever separated from family members able and willing to care for them. Bellerive's personal authorization is now required for the departure of any child.
The orphanage where the children were later taken said at least some of the kids have living parents, who were apparently told that the children were going on a holiday from the post-quake misery.
The Baptist church group's own mission statement said it planned to spend only hours in the devastated capital, quickly identifying children without immediate families and busing them to a rented hotel in the Dominican Republic without getting permission from the Haitian government.
Other child welfare organizations in Haiti called the plan reckless.
"The instinct to swoop in and rescue children may be a natural impulse but it cannot be the solution for the tens of thousands of children left vulnerable by the Haiti earthquake," said Deb Barry, a protection expert at Save the Children. "The possibility of a child being scooped up and mistakenly labeled an orphan in the chaotic aftermath of the disaster is incredibly high."
The church members, most from Idaho, said they were only trying to rescue abandoned and traumatized children.
"In this chaos the government is in right now, we were just trying to do the right thing," the group's spokeswoman, Laura Silsby, said at Haiti's judicial police headquarters, where she and others were taken after their arrest on Friday night trying to cross the border into the Dominican Republic in a bus.
Silsby, 40, admitted she had not obtained the proper Haitian documents for the children.
The children, aged 2 months to 12 years old, were taken to an orphanage run by Austrian-based SOS Children's Villages, where spokesman George Willeit said they arrived "very hungry, very thirsty."
"One (8-year-old) girl was crying, and saying, 'I am not an orphan. I still have my parents'," Willeit said.
The orphanage was working to reunite the children with their families
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