Monday, November 05, 2007

I'm Not Usually a Conspiracy Theorist, BUT.......

There are sometimes where you have to stand back, look at a situation, and go WTF? What the hell is going on here? Some things just don't pass the SMELL test.

Hat Tip: Booker Rising and Prometheus 6

As per NYTimes.com

African Orphans Weren’t, U.N. Says
By LYDIA POLGREEN
Published: November 2, 2007


DAKAR, Senegal, Nov. 1 — Virtually all of the children a French aid group tried to fly out of Chad last week had been living with family members in villages and were not orphans of the Darfur conflict, as the group claimed, the United Nations said Thursday.

That finding was based on interviews conducted with some of the 103 children as the government and aid groups try to figure out where they came from and how to reunite them with their families. The plane carrying the children was stopped moments before it was scheduled to take off from Abéché, a small, dust-choked city that is the base of operations for dozens of aid groups working in eastern Chad.

“These were not orphans in the desert,” said Annette Rehrl, a spokeswoman for the United Nations refugee agency. “They were living with their families.”

A French aid organization, Zoé’s Ark, had claimed that the children were sick, hungry and abandoned, and had raised money from European families to rescue the children and place them temporarily in French homes. But checkups showed the children to be in good condition, Ms. Rehrl said.

“In the context of Chad these are healthy, well-fed children,” she said.

Six French aid workers and seven Spaniards serving as crew members of the plane that was to take the children to France on Oct. 25 have been arrested and charged with attempted kidnapping and fraud. Interviews were conducted with those children old enough to talk, and many were able to give basic information about where they had come from and with whom they lived, Ms. Rehrl said. But because the children are so young — they range between 1 and 10 years old — gathering specific information has proved difficult.

“When you ask a child what is his father’s name, he will say Daddy, not Robert or Muhammad,” said Inah Kaloga of the International Committee of the Red Cross. Using photographs and information in interviews the organization hopes to find the children’s families and reunite them, Ms. Kaloga said.

The majority of the children came from Chadian villages along the border with Sudan, but aid officials were not able to say if the children were Chadians or Sudanese. The border is long and porous, and the violence in Darfur, in western Sudan, and in eastern Chad has pushed residents of both countries into each other’s territory.

For now the children are staying at Abéché’s orphanage, where they are attended to by health and social workers, Ms. Rehrl said. She was quick to add that the children were there not because they are orphans, but because it was the only “child-friendly space available, with a courtyard and toys and places for them to sleep.”

The children had been asked about how they came to be in the custody of Zoé’s Ark, but Ms. Rehrl declined to describe their stories, citing confidentiality.

The scandal has caused outrage and brought condemnation across Africa, where it has a deep resonance from the colonial era, when slave traders, missionaries and colonial officials blithely separated African families with little regard for their wishes. In Congo, officials have suspended all adoptions by foreigners to examine their procedures more carefully, The Associated Press reported, and protesters angry about the actions of the French charity took to the streets in Chad.

The scandal has also raised tensions between Chad and France just as the European Union begins deploying a peacekeeping force in the region aimed at shoring up Chad, which has been increasingly drawn into the four-year-old conflict in neighboring Darfur.

In the close-knit world of aid organizations operating out of Abéché, the bizarre tale has brought a mixture of apprehension and anger. The Chadian government said this week that it planned to tighten its procedures for aid groups. The hullabaloo has proved a burden on already stretched aid workers, Ms. Rehrl said. Figuring out who these children are, where they are from and uniting them with relatives “will take several weeks, if not months,” she said.


Put on that tinfoil hat and tell me what reason you have for this happening. All the places where my mind can go to make 'sense' of this are very dark, and I just don't want to believe that sort of evil exists in the world. So, if you have a sane, not-so-dark explanation of what was going to happen here, please tell me.


Related Articles:
French Charity in Dispute Over African Children

Chad Holds French Citizens Who Took 103 Darfur Children

3 comments:

Brian said...

Put on that tinfoil hat and tell me what reason you have for this happening. All the places where my mind can go to make 'sense' of this are very dark, and I just don't want to believe that sort of evil exists in the world. So, if you have a sane, not-so-dark explanation of what was going to happen here, please tell me.

Yes ma'am...unfortunately this is the world that we live in (an often dark one).

There is something about White privilege...especially White European privilege that tells these people that they have the right to go to an African country and just whisk children away. It's almost as if they must have thought that it was the same as importing exotic animals.... their frame of mind could not have told them that they were dealing with human beings (who deserved the same human rights, were protected by certain laws, were equal, etc... even if they did come from a poor war torn country). It shines some light on how Europeans view Africans.

Would they have tried this out in the open, so boldly in another predominantly White Country? I doubt it.

And I am not sure what the motive could have been. There are all kinds of underground networks for human trafficking... there is child labor... having these kids serve as domestic slaves, there is sexual exploitation, there is simply the possibility of turning a profit from selling them to a third party, there is the possibility of profiting from selling them for adoption, and there is the possibility that some of these people actually believed that they were doing something noble. But then again... if they were legit...then why not go through the proper channels? From my understanding however, many of these kids had parents... so that argument has been weakened.

Perhaps these people have been watching too much American News... and have seen people like Madonna and Angelina Jolie go and get these children from "third world" countries...and they thought that as whites...they had a badge to do the same.

There should be an international investigation of this...and an investigation within the home countries of these people. Although I doubt that there is going to be a full, thorough investigation...nor will there be any accountability, because we are talking about poor African children...and quite frankly the world doesn't give a damn about them. They have no significant advocate in the world... not even the United States... not under the leadership of the Bush Administration.

In fact...Chad has already released the "aid workers".

No accountability whatsoever.

So Rikyrah.... what do you say? Shall we go to France, Spain, or Italy and take some white babies? lol

How long do you think we would have before we would be hunted down and jailed for life by EU authorities?

This was supposedly an Aid group of some kind that was legit. Something obviously needs to be done to tighten the regulations for Aid groups who work with the UN or under UN controlled areas or on UN related missions. Or groups that work in warzones around the world. There should be an international standard in terms of laws and behavior for these groups...and there should be a licensing system to license all Aid groups...and an international licensing board that could levy penalties when this kind of thing occurs. The lack of oversight is what is making so many children vulnerable to abuse by Aid groups.

Based on UN reports... the problem of abuse & corruption involving Aid groups & peacekeepers is pretty rampant.

rikyrah said...

So Rikyrah.... what do you say? Shall we go to France, Spain, or Italy and take some white babies? lol

How long do you think we would have before we would be hunted down and jailed for life by EU authorities?


AI,

Let's be for real...they wouldn't have arrested us. They would have shot us down on the spot, and then bothered themselves about issues of ' why' later.

Oh HELL no. They NEVER would have tried this in even the poorest of White countries.

Brian said...

They NEVER would have tried this in even the poorest of White countries.

Good point.