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Life Talk!

Haiti detains Americans taking kids across border

~MemoTheHun~

Germany

Haiti detains Americans taking kids across border A group of 10 American Baptists were being held in the Haitian capital on Sunday after trying take 33 children out of Haiti. The church group, most of them from Idaho, allegedly lacked the proper documents when they were arrested Friday night in a bus along with children from 2 months to 12 years old who had survived the catastrophic earthquake.

The group says they were setting up an orphanage across the border in the Dominican Republic.

“In this chaos the government is in right now we were just trying to do the right thing,” the group’s spokeswoman, Laura Silsby, told The Associated Press at the judicial police headquarters in the capital, where the Americans were being held pending a hearing today before a judge.

The Baptists’ “Haitian Orphan Rescue Mission” was described as an effort to save abandoned, traumatized children.

Their plan was to scoop up 100 kids and take them by bus to a 45-room hotel at Cabarete, a beach resort in the Dominican Republic, that they were converting into an orphanage, Silsby told the AP.

Whether they realized it or not, these Americans - the first known to be taken into custody since the Jan. 12 quake - put themselves in the middle of a firestorm in Haiti, where government leaders have suspended adoptions amid fears that parentless or lost children are more vulnerable than ever to child trafficking.

Silsby said the group, including members from Texas and Kansas, only had the best of intentions and paid no money for the children, whom she said they obtained from well-known Haitian pastor Jean Sanbil of the Sharing Jesus Ministries.

Silsby, 40, of Boise, Idaho, was asked if she didn’t consider it naive to cross the border without adoption papers at a time when Haitians are so concerned about child trafficking. “By no means are we any part of that. That’s exactly what we are trying to combat,” she said.

She said she hadn’t been following news reports while in Haiti.

Social Affairs Minister Yves Cristallin told the AP that the Americans were suspected of taking part in an illegal adoption scheme.

Cristallin said the 33 children were lodged late Saturday at an SOS Children’s Village outside of Port-au-Prince. SOS Children’s Villages is a global nonprofit based in Austria.

Many children in Haitian orphanages aren’t actually orphans but have been abandoned by family who cannot afford to care for them.

Advocates both here and abroad caution that with so many people unaccounted for, adoptions should not go forward until it can be determined that the children have no relatives who can raise them.

UNICEF and other NGOs have been registering children who may have been separated from their parents. Relief workers are locating children at camps housing the homeless around the capital and are placing them in temporary shelters while they try to locate their parents or a more permanent home.

The US Embassy in Haiti sent consular officials, who met with the detained Americans and gave them bug spray and field rations, according to Sean Lankford of Meridian, Idaho, whose wife and 18-year-old daughter were being held.

“They have to go in front of a judge on Monday,” Lankford told the AP.

“There are allegations of child trafficking and that really couldn’t be farther from the truth,” he added. The children “were going to get the medical attention they needed. They were going to get the clothes and the food and the love they need to be healthy and to start recovering from the tragedy that just happened.”

Haiti has imposed new controls on adoptions since the earthquake, which left thousands of children parentless or separated from their families. The government now requires Prime Minister Max Bellerive to personally authorize the departure of any child as a way to prevent child trafficking.

Silsby said they had documents from the Dominican government, but did not seek any paperwork from the Haitian authorities before taking the children to the border.

She said the children were brought to the pastor by distant relatives, and that the only ones to be put up for adoption would be those without close family to care for them.

The 10 Americans include members of the Central Valley Baptist Church in Meridian, Idaho and the East Side Baptist Church in Twin Falls, Idaho.

 

01.02.2010 News

AP

11:21 AM Feb 01 2010 |

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MarcoArmaniBRA

Brazil

I live in a baptist family… no words :(

I believe they were trying to do sth good, but in the wrong way. :( 

12:34 PM Feb 01 2010 |

Mia★

Mia★

Iraq

I think they only meant well but didn’t go about it in the correct manner =/

12:38 PM Feb 01 2010 |

~MemoTheHun~

Germany

MarcoArman
iBRA

Brazil

I live in a baptist family

 

 

 

 

They should teach you how to be a  human then

01:13 PM Feb 01 2010 |

MarcoArmaniBRA

Brazil

well… ofc they should, I haven't been to the church, you know???

and your Imam should teach you that the suicide with fire (suicide bombers) doesn't lead you to the heaven full of virgins, but to a strip-tease for the devil.

brain-washed sucker!

01:37 PM Feb 01 2010 |

~MemoTheHun~

Germany

:D:D I dont like to see socially damned persons on the Internet but however, sometimes they are funny.

01:43 PM Feb 01 2010 |

MarcoArmaniBRA

Brazil

You are the muslim-60-year-old-virgin, and I AM THE 'SOCIALLY DAMNED'.

lol… at least my relatives didn't die trying to kill israeli people.

 

 

02:06 PM Feb 01 2010 |

Zambuka

Zambuka

United States

guys, stop offending each other…. be tolerant! here we came to discuss the topic, not to agrue about the religion!

04:46 PM Feb 01 2010 |

Zambuka

Zambuka

United States

in fact, who knows may be they wanted to give these children bright future, may be they wanted to make them kinda slaves! but only they know their real intentions!

04:48 PM Feb 01 2010 |

javamanju

javamanju

India

ah these aid workers… They are there only to convert people rather than help. Similar things happened when Tsunami stuck India. All such aid workers, particularly from US and Saudi Arabia were requested to leave the country

05:40 PM Feb 01 2010 |

MarcoArmaniBRA

Brazil

tolerance is something you will never find in these forum, lady.

when the muslims leave this website (it is never going to happen) you can try to give me an advice like that again.

05:50 PM Feb 01 2010 |