Zoe's Ark: Kidnapping or Humanitarianism?

[PatrickHenry]

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/africa/12/26/chad.children/index.html?iref=mpstoryview

A judge sentenced six French aid workers to eight years hard labor Wednesday after convicting them of trying to kidnap 103 children in the central African country of Chad.

The judge also fined each of the six defendants to pay €60,000 ($87,000) to each of the 103 children, according the CNN Paris-based affiliate, BFM-TV.

That order would require each defendant to pay a total of €6,180,000 ($8.9 million.)

Authorities detained members of a French charity, Zoe's Ark, as they tried to fly 103 children from Chad to France.

The charity said the children were orphans who had fled the nearby war-torn Sudanese region of Darfur, but aid agencies later said the children were from Chad, not Sudan, and that they were not orphans.

The court in Chad also sentenced two people from Chad and Sudan to four years in prison. It also acquitted two citizens of Chad.

I am puzzled by this story. Are these folks really being charitable and have been wrongly convicted? Or is it a scheme to steal children from an African nation and give them to white folks?

What do you think?

[lily]

I don't know if you're asking was their heart in the right place, or is this modern day slavery. This (http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20071222/ts_afp/chadfrancetrialchildren_071222183809) artcile makes me think the latter.



NDJAMENA (AFP) - One of six French charity workers on trial in Chad for
allegedly kidnapping more than 100 children to take to France admitted
Saturday that some proved not to be the orphans they had been led to
believe.

And Sudanese defendant Souleimane Ibrahim Adam acknowledged he had certified
that some 60 of the children were Sudanese, when he knew they had Chadian
parents.

The confessions came on the second day of a highly publicised trial against
members of French charity Arche de Zoe (Zoe's Ark), arrested in October as
they were poised to fly 103 children to France from the eastern Chadian town
of Abeche. All six face hard labour terms of up to 20 years if convicted.

Three Chadians are also accused of complicity in the case along with Adam,
considered the chief intermediary in the French charity's dealings to
acquire the children. The trial is to continue on Monday.

Adam acknowledged signing certificates attesting that 63 of the children
were Sudanese after learning the charity planned to build a school there to
teach French and the Koran. He said he also entrusted to the charity four
family members -- three nephews and a grandson -- for the same reason.

"But I never went to find the children in the seven (Chadian) villages they
came from," Adam said.

He also claimed ignorance of the charity's plans to move the children from
its base in the border town of Adra to Abeche, where they were to be flown
to France.

Zoe's Ark members argue their mission aimed to save orphans from the
conflict in Darfur, across Chad's eastern border with Sudan.

But Emilie Lelouch, 31, the girlfriend of Zoe's Ark head Eric Breteau, said
that more than one mother had turned up at the charity's base in eastern
Chad to claim her child.

"We did not even know that the child had a mother," she said, adding that in
each case the charity handed the infant back.

Asked by prosecutor Beassoum Ben Ngassoro if the mothers came from Chad or
Sudan, Lelouch replied, "It didn't matter where they came from, what
mattered was knowing the child had a family."

Earlier she had said she had not met any parents, only local village heads,
and had no doubt that the children were Sudanese.

Defence lawyers say the six, who began a hunger strike two weeks ago, were
duped by local intermediaries -- a claim reiterated by 37-year-old Breteau
on Friday, the first day of the trial.

"Nobody ever expressed even the tiniest doubt about the Sudanese origins of
the children present at our bases," he said.

Breteau also said some of the children needed medical care in France and
that all were "malnourished or undernourished" -- claims that appeared to
contradict those of Adam, the Sudanese, who said the 63 children he
certified were "in good health."

Asked by one lawyer about the money paid by people in France who had agreed
to take the children in, Lelouch replied, "Nothing is free."[hr]Also (http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L30676583.htm)



Here are some details about the French organisation Zoe's Ark, (L'Arche de Zoe) which has said it intended to help the children, not abduct them, and that it acted legally.

* The group was created by enthusiasts from the French four-wheel-drive community in the wake of the tsunami that devastated parts of Asia on December 26, 2004. They set up four temporary camps in Banda Aceh in Indonesia.

* The organisation has a president, Eric Breteau, and a general secretary and around 50 active volunteers.

* In April, Zoe's Ark announced a campaign to evacuate 10,000 orphans from Darfur alongside other French charities including Sauver le Darfour (Save Darfur).

* It said it wanted to place orphaned Darfuri children aged under 5 in foster care with French families, invoking its right to do so under international law.

* The general secretary, Stephanie Lefebvre, told the Le Parisien daily last Friday the organisation never aimed to have the children in its care adopted, and simply wanted to save them from starvation.

-- A seven-strong team, which included a doctor, a nurse and fire-fighters, was based in Chad. Lefebvre said the group sought authorisation from French authorities to grant safe passage to the children it intended to bring back to France, so Zoe's Ark could seek the right of asylum for them.

* France's Foreign Ministry had issued a warning about Zoe's Ark in August, saying there was no guarantee the children were helpless orphans and casting doubt on the project's legality.

[apdst]

Looks to me like this has, "child theft ring", written all over it.