French group lured black kids with sweets, Chad says
By Andrew Redmond
Western Voices
A French non-governmental organization (NGO) has inadvertently focused a much-needed spotlight on the thorny issue of Third World adoptions, with 16 Europeans connected with L’Arche de Zoé (Zoe’s Ark) “aid” group facing decades in prison at forced labor for allegedly kidnapping 103 black Muslim children in Chad, a benighted desert nation in Central Africa, and seeking to resettle them with white families in http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=1067. The Europeans have now been charged with extortion and child abduction by Chad.
The arrests came on October 25 as the children — many reportedly swathed in photogenic gauze for non-existent injuries — were being bundled aboard a Spanish charter flight headed for France. Dozens of French prospective host families expressed disappointment when they heard the news of the arrests as they waited with banners and balloons at Vatry Airport in Paris for the arrival of what they had been told were Sudanese orphans from Darfur. Families had each paid the equivalent of thousands of US dollars up front to “http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=1125" the children, in response to a desperate appeal from Zoe’s Ark that “The children will be dead in a few months” as a result of the population displacements going on in the Sudanese province of Darfur. Zoe’s Ark had asked families to pay in excess of $3000 per child.According to reports, Zoe’s Ark employed local “middlemen” to locate orphaned refugees from Darfur now living in eastern Chad. However, officials in Chad say, the children — some as young as three — were lured with promises of sweets in an apparent attempt to meet the quota for the host families in France. It is claimed that the youngsters were not starving, sick or injured, or in any unusual danger. Many of them were not from Darfur or even orphans at all. Chad has made the claim that some of the kids were wrapped in bandages to give the impression for French cameras that they were desperate war victims rescued by the humanitarians of Zoe’s Ark. The “middlemen” were tribal chiefs and “government” clerks paid to locate likely victims and bring them to the “aid” workers. Apparently, some of the clerks also altered documents to falsely show the children as orphans, though it is unclear if Chad alleges that Zoe’s Ark knew of this.
Zoe’s Ark is a fairly knew charity, formed in the wake of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. Founder Eric Breteau, who is one of those in jail in Chad, claims he named the group after a girl orphaned by the disaster. Zoe’s Ark later climbed on the http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=75 bandwagon, unveiling a plan to evacuate ten thousand orphans from Darfur and resettle them in France. The Chad imbroglio was the first step in the program.
The arrests open up a number of issues surrounding Third World resettlement and foreign involvement in Africa. Darfur is a remote area where blacks have been enslaved by Arab-speaking Sudanese groups for centuries. However, Sudan is Africa’s largest nation and is also ruled by an Islamic regime with a militantly anti-Israel stance, and as a result pressure has been growing to “save Darfur” and intervene militarily against Sudan, using the “humanitarian crisis” as a fulcrum. Non-governmental organizations have been especially important in the anti-Sudan campaign, just as NGOs have played leading roles in various “color revolutions” elsewhere. And some NGOs have played a subversive role inside the West itself. Only recently, http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=1642, not the peaceful integrationists who assaulted the protestors.
In Chad, as in much of Africa, such “white” groups as Zoe’s Ark are highly resented as vestiges of European imperialism, a resentment fuelled by the fact that much of black Africa is dependent, in the form of aid, on the former colonial powers for their very existence. Adding to the bitterness is the fact that France, which once ruled Chad as its colony, is spearheading a European “peacekeeping force” which will see white soldiers stationed in Chad in “response” to Darfur. The French are probably none too happy with the fact that Muammar Ghadaffi, who rules neighboring Liya, has offered his “mediation” services in the Zoe’s Ark case. France fought a long low-intensity war with the Colonel, who views Chad as a place within his sphere of influence.
Echoing the humiliating fact that Chad needs NGO handouts to feed its people, its government has sought to assure foreigners that it still wants them. A government spokesman stated that “anyone not implicated in this affair…and who works in other humanitarian assistance organizations, need not concern themselves with, nor be concerned by, those who would substitute themselves for justice to fill their empty accounts.”
France has sought to soothe Chad by distancing itself from Zoe’s Ark, but suggestions that the detainees be tried in France was met with a huge protest outside the jail where the “aid” group is being kept.
Just as NGOs are a form of “humanitarian imperialism,” the issue of “adopting” non-white children is a touchy one for many in the Third World. Such “adoptions” have become fashionable for rich and famous people in the West. “Brangelina” — the Brad Pitt/Angelina Jolie supercouple — are famous for adopting Ethiopian, Vietnamese and Cambodian orphans, although they were rejected by a New Orleans animal shelter at one point when they attempted to adopt a puppy. The question of the legal status of Third World trophy adoptions has come up, with Jolie attacking the singer Madonna who was accused of illegally adopting a Malawian child who proved not to be an orphan. “Madonna knew the situation in Malawi, where he was born,” Jolie said. “It’s a country where there is no real legal framework for adoption.” (Such cattiness is common in the bleeding heart world: a number of NGOs piled on condemnations of Zoe’s Ark, which were met with a cutting riposte from the group’s lawyer, who blamed the situation on the inefficiency of Zoe’s Ark’s rivals: “All one can concede is that there has been an anarchic disrespect for the formalism of the humanitarian sector.” Competition for white-guilt donations is fierce).
In the latest development, a mob of hundreds of natives chanting “No to the slave trade! No trafficking in children!” pitched rocks at foreign journalists on October 31 outside of the jail in the eastern town of Abeche where the Europeans are being held. Apart from Zoe’s Ark employees, the potential chain-gang convicts count among them the Spanish airplane crew and three journalists who were covering the “heartwarming” story for European consumption. The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) — an organization with a selective and politically charged approach to press freedom — has lodged a complaint in defense of the journalists. The IFJ’s move is likely to anger Chad as another example of Western meddling in their own internal affairs.
The developing Zoe’s Ark case highlights the mendacity of white liberals who are blinded to their own breathtaking arrogance and sense of white skin privilege by a self-righteous belief that they know what is best for supposed “lesser breeds without the law.”
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