Shortly after the earthquake in Haiti a group of ten American Christians from a church in Idaho were arrested in that country for trying to take children out of the devastation. Dark rumours of child trafficking, sexual slavery, and other foul practices swirled. The Christians were portrayed as preying upon the weak and vulnerable.
Eventually, eight of the ten were released. The remaining two are in Haiti awaiting further developments--as far as we know.
We do not wish to pass any comment on the legality, or prudence, or wisdom of what the folk from Idaho did. The best case scenario is that they were moved with genuine compassion and wanted to make the most effective contribution they could--which was to provide adoptive homes to children facing devastation.
One of the objections raised by the Haitian politicians and "government officials" was that at least some of the children were not genuine orphans: they had parents who were living.
Al Jazeera has done a follow up story, and claims that the children in question have not been re-united with their parents, but remain in an orphanage in Haiti. It appears they have either been abandoned by their parents, or the "government" authorities have little interest in reuniting them with their birth parents. It smacks of the "government" exploiting the children's circumstances when it was useful for propaganda purposes, but having no real commitment to the long term welfare of the children at all.
Haiti's 'orphans' kept from parents
Eight of the 10 Christian missionaries that were detained in Haiti after they illegally tried to take 33 Haitian children across the border - following January's devastating earthquake - have been freed and are now back at home in the US.
They were released after some parents of the Haitian children came forward to the court admitting that they willingly gave away their children to the US missionary group in hopes of providing them "a better life".
However, the children have been living in limbo waiting to be reunited with their parents in the capital, Port-au-Prince.
"I wouldn't say things are not good here ... but I want to see my mum and dad", one of the children said about the orphanage where he is staying in the mountain village of Callebasse.
SOS orphanage, asked by the government to care for the abandoned children, is also unsure about their future.
"Honestly we don't know. I mean the kids have been in our care for five weeks," Line Wolf Nielson, a worker at the orphanage, said.
"As it is we have no timeframe on when we can reunite the kids with their families."
The parents of the children say they have been met with hostility by Haitian authorities over requests to get their children back.
"We feel like the government is punishing us for what we did," one parent said.
"The childcare workers are rude, they ignore us and they keep giving us the runaround."
When Al Jazeera's Steve Chao tried to talk to child welfare services to get some answers about the fate of the children, he was refused an interview.
One imagines that if amongst the "ten" had been Madonna, or Brangelina, the authorities would have long ago released the children and cheered them on their way. The drama being staged at Political Theatre Haiti would have had a very different ending. Almost certainly some government officials would have had bulging wallets as they "blessed" the departing children.
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