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October 27, 2007
The Kidnapper NGO

A scandal erupts around a French non-governmental organization that was caught trafficking children from Chad to France:

More than 100 children are in the custody of Chadian social services after members of a non-governmental organisation who said they were "rescuing" them from Sudan’s war-torn Darfur region were arrested on their way to France.

The NGO involved here, L’Arche de Zoé, was founded and is led by one Eric Breteau, now imprisoned in Chad, who in most reports is characterized as a "former fireman".

That’s an interesting ‘humanitarian’ detail – I have a better one.

Breteau may well have been a fireman at one time or another. More importantly he has experience as a NGO leader. Back in 2004 he was the president of the French Association for SUVs.

On June 8, the Paris City Council fired the first shot in voting a "wish to limit the use of" SUVs in the French capital because, according to the Paris Green Party, they produce "four times more carbon dioxide than other cars".
[…]
The Paris City Council’s move brought an immediate and angry response from the president of the French Association of SUVs, Eric Breteau.


"SUVs have the right to drive everywhere, just like other vehicles," Breteau thundered, and denounced the Paris initiative as "whimsical and crude propaganda."

Really the same Eric Breteau who’s NGO is ‘rescues’ children in Darfur?

Yes. From the tsunami site www.indonesia-relief.org (google cache) we indeed learn:

Eric Breteau, President of the French Federation of 4×4 has also merged their tsunami projects to give birth to a more efficient Zoes Ark.

The president of a gas guzzler club is now leading a ‘humanitarian’ NGO which ‘rescues’, i.e. robs and sells, children, refugees of a resource war. It’s hard to beat such cynicism. Then again –  no current media report mentions it. A former fireman is more ‘humanitarian’.

A bit more on the Chad case:

Some media reported that the children – aged one
to nine according to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) – were orphaned and
sick and being evacuated to receive health care. One humanitarian
worker in Chad told IRIN some of the children had bandaged limbs.

But later UNHCR said the children were found to be in good health.
[…]
Chad and Sudan do not allow international adoption, and L’Arche e Zoé had "no official authorisation" to take the children, Chadian Minister Bachir is quoted as saying.

But the head of L’Arche de Zoé [in France] has told a French newspaper that the organisation was not setting up adoptions and meant no harm when it planned the operation, which is now being termed an illegal kidnapping and possibly child-trafficking.

[…]
"I assure you the Chadian authorities gave us all necessary authorisation," Lefebvre added. The Chadian authorities disagree.

Lefebvre said 300 families had agreed to host children, paying up to 2,400 euros (US$3,450) each.

Aljazeera and others add more details:

  • the price French families payed to ‘host’ a child was up to $8,600
  • the charity has already collected over $1.4 million in an Internet campaign and planed for 1,000 ‘host’ families
  • "A source close to Arche de Zoe said that the French military, which has a force in Chad, had helped fly its material into the east of country when it arrived in August"
  • Chad, France and the UN have condemned the scheme

While the mission of L’Arche de Zoé sounds all humanitarian, if one does the rough math one starts wonder about the motives:

Revenue:
– 100 children per flight with families paying ~$5,000 per child: $500,000
Costs:
– $100,000 charter for the flight and $150,000 for marketing, organization (mostly volunteers) and the usual bribes

Profit:
– $250,000 per transfer-flight, tax-free as a charity

Ten planed flights for a net income of some $2.5 million. All of this to pay the organizations management?

While probably not as profitable as the ‘Save Darfur’ scam, the 4×4 driving founder of L’Arche de Zoé had a very reasonable business case – up to now.

The inflation of NGO’s began with a neoliberal run to privatize foreign aid. In parallel Marxists turned neocons like Bernard Kouchner re-invented neo-colonialism under the guise of ‘humanitarian intervention’.

NGOs for profit, like L’Arche de Zoé, are the natural outcome of these trends. We will see many more before that tide turns again.

Posted by b on October 27, 2007 at 15:04 UTC | Permalink
Comments

is’nt it about time we had a real debate regarding which types & forms of international aid/support (economic, cultural & political) provide the most-positive and more importantly, the most-lasting impact

Posted by: jony_b_cool | Oct 27 2007 15:21 utc | 1

oh my, this is truly terrible. I suspect that many if not all those french families are good people who really do want to save a child from a horrid life. it would be too awful to think they actually want the children for some other purpose.
the fees are suspicious however, it should not cost so much up front just to get the child into France. other questions arise as well, such as how did these children get visas and passports?
i believe what we have is a rotten bastard playing on the emotions of decent people. it is quite likely that most of the people in the organization also thought they were doing good things for those children. on the face of it, living in france has got to be better than living in most areas of the Sudan. of course, those children would not be able to make an informed decision on that if indeed they were offered a choice at all.
this kind of story should make citizen k feel a little better, he can now point at those liberal europeans and exclaim that they are even worse than the us capitalists everyone loves to hate.

Posted by: dan of steele | Oct 27 2007 18:18 utc | 2

Now I don’t know the nitty gritty details, but it is for sure that Bernard Kouchner and Rama Yade (dpt. of human rights, under Kouchner) knew about it and didn’t act promptly.
According to the report linked, in french, Zoé was completely upfront on its site, of course in rather obscure language, but they did say, this is no adoption, if you want to keep the child, there are various conditions, they referred to French law, and did not gloss over the difficulties. etc.
rue 89, in french

Posted by: Tangerine | Oct 27 2007 18:20 utc | 3

@DoS – i believe what we have is a rotten bastard playing on the emotions of decent people. it is quite likely that most of the people in the organization also thought they were doing good things for those children. on the face of it, living in france has got to be better than living in most areas of the Sudan.
I agree on the first part, decent people falling for this, but still have to ask: If I can google the guy in 10 minutes and wonder about his ‘humanitarian’ aspects (there is more dirt on him out there, but my french is too bad to translate), why can those who would take kids from him? How responsible are they?
On the second part – according to the reports these kids were not orphans. Isn’t it better for them to live with their family in their own country than with strangers in a foreign one?

Posted by: b | Oct 27 2007 18:34 utc | 4

decent people are usually innocent and naive. only a cynic would suspect foul play when it comes to “saving children”
I really can’t dismiss those families so easily, they were making significant sacrifices and actually doing something to make someone’s life better, or at least they thought they were. that is a helluva lot more than I do.

Posted by: dan of steele | Oct 27 2007 18:52 utc | 5

The families must have just opened their hearts and thought they could save a child.
L’arche de Zoé: un refuge pour les enfants.
In French, but the pictures tell the story, with its mixture of pseudo hard fact, tearful appeals, science meets sentimentalism.
The last sentence is: * In a few months, these chldren will be dead.* (Thats about Darfur.)
arche de zoé

Posted by: Tangerine | Oct 27 2007 20:23 utc | 6

hope i’m not being cold-hearted, but to what extent do we want to substitute realism with approaches based on decency.
realism:
only those approaches (economic, political, cultural) that have lasting impact across the board can end the cycle of problems. And there is actually no sentimental or emotional or moral component required for realism-based approaches.
decency:
we feel so much better about ourselves even though nothing has really changed in the big-picture.
Hence, its no wonder more & more Africans are beginning to question whether Western aid is loaded with cultural & moral superiority

Posted by: jony_b_cool | Oct 27 2007 22:58 utc | 7

An update by BBC: Spanish plane crew held in Chad

Chadian authorities have detained the seven Spanish crew members of a plane chartered to fly more than 100 children to France.
The crew are being held along with nine French citizens – three journalists and six members of the French charity Zoe’s Ark – in the eastern town of Abeche.
The charity says the children need medical treatment, but a BBC reporter says they appear to be in good health.
Inquires also indicate they are not all orphans from Darfur, as Zoe’s Ark says.
Staff from the United Nations children’s agency, Unicef, said many of the children cry at night for their parents and say they are from villages in Chad.
A spokesperson for Zoe’s Ark, Stephanie Lefebvre, has denied there was any plan to sell the children for adoption. She insisted the children had been sick and needed help.
…
The vast majority of the children are believed to be between three and five years old, with the oldest about eight or nine, and several babies no more than one-and-a-half, our correspondent says.
The president of the French national committee for Unicef said 48 of the children questioned so far appeared to be Chadian, not Sudanese.
“Our impression is that the majority aren’t orphans, but at this stage it’s just an impression,” Jacques Hintzy told Radio Television Luxembourg.

Posted by: b | Oct 28 2007 13:55 utc | 8

For me the vital point is that the French Authorities did not step in. The whole thing was illegal in French or European law. I am fairly certain the Chirac Gvmt. would have never let it go so far.
Meanwhile, some French municipalities /districts struggle to reach their expulsion quota. Yes, there is an expulsion quota, set (under the authority of) Sarko the first. Some can’t reach it – there aren’t enough illegals; they don’t have enough police/clerks/cars/what have you; etc. The laws are very complicated, very bureaucratic, multi tiered. Accomplishing a ‘clean’ expulsion is a tough task. For example, to get something similar to a ‘restraining order’ from the penal system (eg judge) only four hours are permitted. If the four hours elapse, the person (or some of them, it depends on their status) must be let go. I don’t know what the ratio of arrest/successful expulsion is, nobody does, but it must be very low. French bureaucracy eats its own tail. All this keeps police and others endlessly occupied to try and meet the quota. The ppl involved know they will fail so they don’t pursue it diligently and they cover their asses with a lot of paperwork. Meanwhile, other tasks are neglected, complaints stream in, state employees are demoralised, etc etc. It is a run around circus.
French authorities pick up illegal children at school.
But tolerate illegal children being flown in. (Say)

Posted by: Tangerine | Oct 28 2007 15:49 utc | 9

the main problem in Africa today simply boils down to class-systems in disarray. Primarily as a result of the slavery-era & colonization era that left Africa in arbitrary structures that inevitably became loooting grounds for all forms of parasitic Africans & Euros alike.
sympathy, morality, empathy, caring, charity … Thats all good.
but it might be better if these bleeding-heart NGO do-gooders did nothing. Because what they end up doing is pimping via exploition of notions of Eurocentric cultural & moral superiority amongst the folks back in the Euro-lands.
hence they ultimately undermine those Euros who have an understandding of the problems & how it might be fixed.
and by the way, how does it make sense to take African children, orphans or not, and to remove them to the Euro-lands where their race places them by default at the most difficult, oppressed & scorned levels of the existing class system. Yes they will receive plenty of bread & circus but are they so blind & dumb that they will not hurt deeply as a result of their immense loss.
it is moral superiority that contemplates that an African orphan is better of raised in Europe, especially knowing the incredible challenge of life awaiting him/her there. When there is so much else that can be done instead to assist him/her family & community right their in the land that unconditionally recognizes him/her.

Posted by: jony_b_cool | Oct 28 2007 17:23 utc | 10

reuter’s article sunday
Chad children say were offered sweets to leave home

ABECHE, Chad (Reuters) – Europeans offered sweets and biscuits to encourage poor African children to leave their homes, children said on Sunday, as Chad probed an operation to ship out young children to live with families in Europe.
…
..some children said their parents are still alive, and they were taken from their villages on the Chad-Sudan border.
“My parents had gone to work in the fields. As we were playing some Chadians came and said here are some sweets, why don’t you follow us to Adre and then we’ll take you home. We were taken to the hospital in Adre,” said a young boy who gave his name as Osman. Adre is a town on the Chad-Sudan border.
“We spent seven days in Adre and I’ve been here in Abeche for more than one month. We were well fed by the whites, there was always food. I would like to go back to find my parents,” he told reporters at the Abeche orphanage where the children are being cared for by local and international aid workers.
…
Ten-year-old Mariam, who was one of the group along with her younger sister, said their mother was dead but their father was still alive.
“A car came with two whites and one black man who spoke Arabic. The driver said come with me, I’ll give you some money and biscuits and then I’ll take you home,” she said.
“We were taken to the white people’s house and they gave us medicine — small white tablets. I was not ill. All the children were given pills. They told us that we would no longer be able to go home,” Mariam said.
Hamsa Brahim, also 10, said he had left the border village of Adikoum, near Adre, with his father’s permission after the visitors promised the children an education.
“The whites came, they said they would enroll us in school … They came four times to take children from our village — many children went with them,” he said.

Posted by: b real | Oct 29 2007 4:20 utc | 11

Bernhard:
The inflation of NGO’s began with a neoliberal run to privatize foreign aid. In parallel Marxists turned neocons like Bernard Kouchner re-invented neo-colonialism under the guise of ‘humanitarian intervention’.
excellent point. And to add:
government-affiliated aid from Europe/USA was in the past (and probably still is) very often given with the full knowledge of all parties involved that a scandalous portion of the money would end up being mis-appropriated into the bank accounts of African leaders & various stake-holder individuals/companies from the West.
In addition aid often came with strings attached requiring that large portions of the money be returned back to the donor countries as payment for goods, equipment & services, regardless of whether more suitable/appropriate and cheaper sources were available from other countries.

Posted by: jony_b_cool | Oct 29 2007 9:47 utc | 12

The WHO organization (a UN subisidiary) now has a sister, or so called sister, Org., the Global Funds.
The GF lives off donations by individuals, the best known and biggest givers are Bill and Melissa Gates; and gvmts, in a sort of indirect way. Eg. the carbon tax France levies on plane flights is shunted to the Global Funds, which means it now has a French President, after the previous one, an Anglo of the old school, who was booted out for… .well I can’t say. It is possible but tiresome and difficult to scope this out on the net. The financial details are buried.
This is HUGE business, influence and power grabs of a type that cannot really be imagined.
the global fund site
Digging into that sprawling site will not bring up the name of the director! Or of its internal command structure. (Or at least in some 10 mins I didn’t find it. Of course they have nice black ladies on the ‘board’….)
Wiki on Feachem, previous director
html of pdf on present director, Michel Kazatchkine
link
here is a press release about the handover, buried in the GF site:
link
Kofi Annan supported the creation of this organism, thereby condemning the WHO to an uncertain future, to put it mildly.
Here is Feachem on its principles etc, only the first sentence is true or relevant; the others are not entirely incorrect:
RF: The Global Fund was established on the following seven principles: First, it operates as a financial instrument — not as an implementing entity. Second, it makes available and leverages additional financial resources. Third, it supports programs that evolve from national plans and priorities. Fourth, it operates in a balanced manner with respect to different geographical regions, diseases, and health-care interventions. Fifth, it pursues an integrated and balanced approach to prevention, treatment, care, and support. Sixth, it evaluates proposals through an independent review process. And seventh, it operates transparently and accountably and employs a simplified, rapid, and innovative grantmaking process. link
France taxes flight to buy meds for poor ppl in poor countries (first and only in the world): Chirac’s initiative. The article does not say where the money will go to, but it is made clear for those in the know .. une taxe pour intensifier la lutte contre le Sida, le paludisme et la tuberculose dans le Tiers-Monde. – the by line of the Global Funds.
lexpansion, in french
Humanitarian efforts are a huge business, not only because with social legitimacy it becomes possible to control who exactly will earn a bomb, by selling meds, etc, or capturing Gvmt. subsidies, private or corporate donations, or organizing things on the ground, but because medical, nutritional status, movement, energy access etc. control of populations permits large scale killing under the radar. The scam, or the control, goes well beyond distributing money to buddies.
Long post because it is really important.

Posted by: Tangerine | Oct 29 2007 19:39 utc | 13

@Tangerine – thanks – smells a bit like a global racket – and yes, it’s important – if there are more sources, please let me know.

Posted by: b | Oct 29 2007 20:04 utc | 14

Before condemning this organization outright, why don’t you wait until the investigation turns up what actually happened. It’s true that their operation was naive, and completely unorthodox. And yes, the initial reports that some of the children may not be orphans are quite disturbing. However your other accusations are a bit off– the families were in fact asked to contribute at least 1,400 euros each to cover costs. They all contributed what they could. The organizers said they would give whatever was left over to the parent association that was founded this July. In fact, they talk about this on their site here. Also, “tax-free as a charity” is a bit of an American-ism, as that concept is different in France.
Also, it’s unfair to condemn Breteau outright just because he was the head of a 4×4 association– I mean are you 100% consistent in all your views? And since when does wanting to help children in Darfur mean you have to be an environmentalist, too? The two are completely different issues.
Finally, I some of the comments on this site condemning international aid and big humanitarian aid to be interesting– it is supposedly these arguments (that these organizations are corrupt and not doing any good) that lead the Arche de Zoe to decide to do their operation in the first place. Food for thought.

Posted by: Anonymous in France | Oct 30 2007 1:08 utc | 15

And since when does wanting to help children in Darfur mean you have to be an environmentalist, too? The two are completely different issues.
Darfur is a resource conflict over water. 4×4 driving, global warming, lack of water …
Two completely different issues?

Posted by: b | Oct 30 2007 6:20 utc | 16

@15
Before condemning this organization outright, why don’t you wait until the investigation turns up what actually happened. It’s true that their operation was naive, and completely unorthodox.
fair enough, — innocent until proven guilty
and if statements by the kids that they were lured by the kidnappers with candy eventually turn out to be untrue, these kids must be a bunch of pathological liars. The question is why would anyone want to adopt such kids. Possibly the intention was to bring them to France to exorcise the dark sins within their barbaric little souls.
so far, this looks more like a huge perversion than a naive/unorthodox operation. Perhaps we might try for a moment to imagine 103 blonde/blue-eyed French kids in the same circumstance.

Posted by: jony_b_cool | Oct 30 2007 13:38 utc | 17

One question. How were these kids going to get into france without a passport or visa? Am I missing something here.I have just returned from Uganda as an NGO building an orphanage and also adopted a daughter from China. Each process required alot of interaction with the government. We cannot be getting all the information you just cant fly into a country get some kids and walk out without officials knowing your there.

Posted by: rick | Nov 1 2007 1:47 utc | 18

They were planning on getting the kids to france and then waging a legal battle to have them recognized as refugees.
you just cant fly into a country get some kids and walk out without officials knowing your there.
Exactly. The French government was aware of the project–the organization sent them information, they met with them. Rama Yade even admitted as such-though she then said they “discouraged them”. But they didn’t stop them. The French let this go forward until they got caught in Chad. It’s almost as though they wanted to see if it would work.

Posted by: Anonymous | Nov 1 2007 9:05 utc | 19

Children in Chad abduction row say they have parents: aid agencies

International aid agencies on Thursday cast doubts on the war orphan label attached to 103 children at the centre of a child abduction scandal involving a French charity in Chad.
In a joint statement, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and UNICEF said most of the children had spoken of coming from a “family environment with at least one adult in a parental role”.
“Therefore they cannot be considered to be orphans,” ICRC spokeswoman Anna Schaaf told AFP in Geneva.
The statement added that most also appeared to have come from villages along the Chad-Sudan border.

Posted by: b | Nov 1 2007 14:56 utc | 20

Legal framework a hindrance in ‘child-trafficking’ case

DAKAR, 1 November 2007 (IRIN) – Chadian and UN officials say the absence of a child trafficking law in Chad will hamper efforts to prosecute members of a French association who were arrested in the country while trying to take 103 children to host families in France.
…
Six members of the group – arrested on 25 October – have been charged with abducting minors for the purpose of changing their civil status (giving them new parents), a crime that carries a penalty of five to 20 years of forced labour.
“There are no other penalties in the abduction chapter [of the criminal code] stronger than the one we chose,” said Ahmad Daoud Chari, state prosecutor in Abéché, the eastern Chadian town where the members of the association were arrested.
“Our penal code is limited. It doesn’t cover [many] infractions. There is a gap,” Chari told IRIN.
According to Papa Babacar Ndiaye, national program officer at the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) for West and Central Africa, the gap in Chadian legislation creates several obstacles.
“The drawback is that you may commit a very serious crime – child trafficking is among the most serious crimes – and then be punished for a less serious crime,” he told IRIN.
He said charges of abduction would not only result in more lenient sentences in the case of a conviction, but would be harder to convict in the first place.
“It might be easier for an investigator to prove human trafficking than to prove abduction,” he said.
Although the information has not yet been verified, there is speculation in this case that the children were willingly handed over, in which case abduction would be difficult to prove, Ndiaye said.
Trafficking legislation usually encompasses the illegal recruitment of children from “vulnerable” parents, who may agree to give up their children because they cannot care for them, he said.
A conviction in child trafficking also allows authorities to seize any assets used in the commission of the crime, Ndiaye said, which can deter future incidences.
…
The UNODC says the case has highlighted a widespread problem.
“There are many countries [that] lag behind in enforcing these conventions, especially organised crime conventions,” the UNODC’s Ndiaye said.

Posted by: b real | Nov 1 2007 15:10 utc | 21

I have just returned from Uganda as an NGO building an orphanage and also adopted a daughter from China.
we now have 2 rick’s here?

Posted by: annie | Nov 1 2007 15:44 utc | 22

The French government was aware of the project–the organization sent them information, they met with them. Rama Yade even admitted as such-though she then said they “discouraged them”. But they didn’t stop them. The French let this go forward until they got caught in Chad. It’s almost as though they wanted to see if it would work.
it does seem extremely strange. they apparently didn’t discourage them too much if the NGO arrived in chad on french army planes!
But later UNHCR said the children were found to be in good health.
they must have had some idea when these children were chosen they weren’t sickly.
CSmonitor

The French government has been aware of Zoe’s Ark and its humanitarian aims since the spring. But it disassociated itself in the wake of the smuggling charges this week, and after Chadian president Idriss Deby accused the Ark of pedophilia and organ trafficking.
Zoe’s Ark members flew to Chad on French Army planes, according to French media stories yesterday. The French foreign ministry in Paris and the French embassy in Chad were in conversation with Zoe’s Ark several times since last spring.
Almost from the moment it landed in Chad, the group’s ideas for helping children changed. Members set up a camp on the border between Chad and Sudan, in a village called Adre, operated under a new name, and begin hiring local villagers to identify and rescue children in need. It shifted goals from saving starving children, to saving orphans, to helping injured children.
French media yesterday reported that local middlemen working on behalf of Zoe’s Ark did not go into Sudan, but found children in local villages in Chad. Many were, apparently, not orphans, and many were Chadian. Some parents may have been given promises of a fine life in France for their children.
…
“I can’t imagine that people would come from a rich country and do something like that here. When people see white people come to help us and do bad things like this,” he adds, “it means the white man is dangerous.”

Posted by: annie | Nov 1 2007 16:26 utc | 23

@21:
Papa Babacar Ndiaye (national program officer at the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) for West and Central Africa)”:
Trafficking legislation usually encompasses the illegal recruitment of children from “vulnerable” parents, who may agree to give up their children because they cannot care for them, he said.
these kids were RECRUITED ??? Maybe its just a French to English translation thing.
And its just moral-superiority that in Europe, a “vulnerable” mother who hands-over her child to “recruiters” would be arrested, but in Africa, she is pitied (by the Eurocentric authorities AND NOT HER PEERS/COMMUNITY) for her vulnerability (& lowered expectations deriving from her default position on the moral scale).
by the way, it seems from reports that these kids though impoverished, were at no more imminent risk of dying from starvation or disease than any typical kid in Europe or America.

Posted by: jony_b_cool | Nov 1 2007 18:11 utc | 24

these kids were RECRUITED ???
from the #23 link..
the group’s ideas for helping children changed. Members set up a camp on the border between Chad and Sudan, in a village called Adre, operated under a new name, and begin hiring local villagers to identify and rescue children
if they were in contact w/the french embassy in chad since the spring one would think they could have arranged for them to deal w/the state which presumably would have some contact w/impoverished orphans. it appears they landed (via french army transport) in chad (why not sudan as they advertised) w/return exit flight via Spanish-rented plane (why didn’t they use the same french army transport?) that i presume was pre arranged. the odd part to me is this ‘hiring of local villagers’. how much does one pay a villager to round up kids?
why not deal w/the state to begin with if your aims are sincere. who would NOT think of dealing w/the state. they dealt w/the french gov. what rational would exempt the chad government to begin with?
smells too fishy.

Posted by: annie | Nov 1 2007 18:37 utc | 25

Yeah, annie that’s wasn’t me at #22 – I have never been to Uganda. If rick keeps posting, and I hope he does, I will use Rick Happ for clarity.

Posted by: Rick | Nov 1 2007 18:48 utc | 26

and from page 1 of the CSMonitor link (@23):
Paris – The ongoing Zoe’s Ark incident, involving the removal of 103 children from Chad to Europe, may be a case of French volunteer gallantry run amok. It also could be a story of avaricious individuals, looking to make a quick buck by grabbing unattended children.
is referring to this as “grabbing” rather than “kidnapping” yet another example of morally-superior language that we saw during Katrina where blacks are described as “looting” abandoned grocery stores while Whites doing exactly the same thing were said to be “finding” ?
it should a crime against all Africans & all children (of all races) to so grossly mis-characcterize this as “grabbing”. If a loaf of bread or a bicycle is “grabbed”, it is “theft”. Why sugar-coat it, especcially in a supposedly respectable publication like the CS-Monitor. Never mind that its a living breathing human being we’re talking about.
Not sure though if articles like this play a part in why the Chadians & Darfurians are furious, outraged and demonstrating over the kidnnappings.

Posted by: jony_b_cool | Nov 1 2007 19:11 utc | 27

and theres a surreal history to this :
hundreds of years ago, “unattended” (CS Monitor terminology) people were “recruited” (UN terminology) or “grabbed” (CS Monitor terminology) from Africa and dispatched to South Carolina & Alabama to pick cotton, likewise with the help of “hired locals”, paid with muskets & whisky.
however, greenbacks & Euro’s are the preferred forms of payment for todays “hired locals” as they offer a more liquid means for obtaining the tools & rewards for their criminal enterprise.
Thanks to the UN, it is now illegal to do engage in human trade. But back in the days, when UN human-trafficking laws did’nt exist, it was apparently OK to “recruit & grab”. No one knew whether village laws against the practice applied or even existed. There was no way (or incentive) to verify. Even though the villagers clearly did’nt want to be “recruited” and soon learnt to run like hell into the bushes whenever the recruiters & grabbers showed up.

Posted by: jony_b_cool | Nov 1 2007 20:00 utc | 28

Journalist freed by Chad criticises aid workers

PARIS (Reuters) – A journalist arrested with French aid workers as they tried to fly 103 African children out of Chad criticised the activists for their “amateurishness” but said they were convinced their mission was legitimate.
Marc Garmirian, one of three French reporters who were released and flown back to France on Sunday, said he filmed some of the aid workers putting bandages on children to make them seem injured before the flight.
…
Garmirian’s employer, French news agency CAPA, released on Sunday television footage that showed members of Zoe’s Ark putting bandages on children and pouring liquid on them to make it seem as though they were injured.
…
Two members of Zoe’s Ark — Breteau and Emilie Lelouch — remained convinced that they had acted legally, he said.
“You could say that they are lunatics, fanatics. In any case, up until the moment I left the prison, Emilie Lelouch and Eric Breteau remained convinced that their mission was legitimate,” he told Europe 1 radio in a separate interview.

why does it matter if they thought “their mission was legitimate”? the lunatics bush & blair said the same thing about invading iraq.

Posted by: b real | Nov 6 2007 4:48 utc | 29

oh they’re just some naive & misquided do-gooders, according to the capitalist media
did see this mentioned, though, in a wire story from the missionary service news agency

In a brief press conference in N’Djamena, Sarkozy said he hoped that the remaining French nationals would face trial in France. According to the local press, various Chadian magistrates protested against the developments of the case, denouncing “political pressure from State figures”. Members of the Chadian opposition in exile criticised Sarkozy’s visit, which “deepens the grief of the populations of our remote villages, humiliated in this case, due to the complicity and indifference of their leaders in matters of good political governance and social-economic and cultural rights”. Meanwhile, a reportage shot by Marc Garmirian, one of the French journalists brought back to France, clearly reveals that the head of Zoe’s Ark, Eric Breteau, was aware that the operation was illegal and expected his possible arrest on landing in France.

Posted by: b real | Nov 6 2007 5:09 utc | 30

This is a very interesting case. It is obvious fraud. It just shows you how much the humanitarian aid has turned to a business, just like health care. This is not just one black sheep. The whole NGO and UN stuff stinks. The best thing would be to cut all humanitarian aid all over the world. To the really poor it would make (unfortunately) no difference. I worked long enough in Africa to see the nicest cars are driven by NGO people and the corrupt government officials.

Posted by: Marcel | Dec 27 2007 10:27 utc | 31

Isnt it possible that these NGO-people have been scammed? Scammed to try to get “orphans” out of the country, just to be sued for millions?

Posted by: Chris | Jan 28 2008 13:57 utc | 32

Marcel@32
The best thing would be to cut all humanitarian aid all over the world. To the really poor it would make (unfortunately) no difference. I worked long enough in Africa to see the nicest cars are driven by NGO people and the corrupt government officials.
Agreed, Thank you Marcel and please don’t give up.

Posted by: jony_b_cool | Jan 29 2008 0:58 utc | 33

French court jails aid workers sent back from Chad

CRETEIL, France (Reuters) – Six French activists sentenced in Chad to eight years’ hard labour for trying to kidnap dozens of children had their sentences converted into French jail terms of the same length by a court on Monday.
The six members of the aid group Zoe’s Ark were arrested in Chad in October and found guilty last month of trying to kidnap 103 African children. They were later flown back to France under a cooperation agreement between the two countries.
…
French law does not recognise hard labour and the court in the Paris suburb of Creteil converted their sentences into normal prison terms of eight years at a hearing that did not examine the merits of the case against them in Chad.
The court said that, under French law, the case amounted to “illegal confinement of minors under the age of 15”.
Defence lawyers said before the hearing opened earlier this month that the Chadian sentences were not valid because they were imposed in what they described as an undemocratic state after a trial they said was not fair.

Posted by: b real | Jan 29 2008 5:37 utc | 34

an NGO that takes the approach that on the long run its much better to assist, encourage & support community (large and small) efforts to organize and improve their conditions is infinitely more useful than one that is focused on “saving” people & children. And if more NGO personnel would try to understand their own histories, they would know this to be an indisputable cultural & anthropological fact.
The historical blind-spot for many lies in the misunderstanding or ignorance of phenomena that contribute to progress. For example, theres the parallel phenomena of communist USSR expending its resources to compete with the West while communist China quietly invested in education, infrastructure and industrial policy. The different results are evident today. And the phenomena that made Western Europe what it is today, is critically related to two thousand years of the Roman Catholic church and its monarchical subsidiaries. And the USA extended the result but in a more grassroots manner.
theres a phenomena that helps Africa progress. Because we haven’t seen it does not mean it does not exist. All we know for now is that the historical obstacles are immense. Still, like everywhere else, it will depend on the motivation of ordinary common people to succeed.
and congrats to the French courts for striking a big blow against moral superiority.

Posted by: jony_b_cool | Jan 29 2008 8:23 utc | 35

Chad president offers pardon for French aid workers

Chadian President Idriss Déby Itno said on Thursday he was willing to pardon six French aid workers convicted of trying to fly more than 100 children out of the country, now serving their jail terms in France.
“I am ready to pardon them,” Déby told French radio Europe 1. “If the French government makes the request, we are able to ask for their release.”
Asked whether a pardon could take place soon, he replied: “Absolutely.”
On Wednesday Déby had said a pardon for the six was “not impossible”, after talks with French Defence Minister Herve Morin, during which he thanked Paris for supporting his regime in the face of a week-long rebel assault.
France has 1 450 troops plus Mirage jet fighters in Chad, and while France says it provided no direct military back-up, Déby said on Thursday it had provided him with vital intelligence support in repelling rebels from the capital.

heh

Posted by: b real | Feb 7 2008 19:26 utc | 36

the arche de zoe showed a complete contempt for humanity – especially black humanity – & commodified the suffering of chadians. they are criminals & ought to be treated as criminals. french jurisprudence was correct in this instant to incarcerate them
if they are freed – in a regal gesture – it will underline the contempt for humanity

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Feb 7 2008 20:02 utc | 37

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