US Kidnappers – Will Colonialism Never End?

A group of 10 Americans have been arrested in Haiti for “tried to take 33 Haitian children out of the country last week without the government’s consent.”  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/05/world/americas/05orphans.html?hp That’s a polite way of putting the fact that these Baptist church members were kidnapping children.

Let’s pretend for a moment that they actually bothered to check and make sure these children didn’t have family members who would be devastated to lose their children/relatives.  What ego drives you to think that you can go into another country and take children away?  Imagine if a country that had better universal education, that had universal health care, etc. came to the U.S. and seeing our deplorable foster care system, decided to kidnap children in foster care, convinced they could provide them with a better life than they could ever hope to have in the U.S. (and if you doubt how hard it is to be a foster care kid, look at the graduation rates, the suicide rates, homelessness, rates, etc.).  Add another element.  Assume the people doing the kidnapping do not reflect the “mainstream” America (i.e., are not white and not Christian).  Then imagine our outrage.

“In a sign of the cloudy nature of the case, the prosecutor, Mazar Fortil, decided not to pursue what could have been the most serious charge against the group, that of trafficking.”

I think this is a mistake.  See my recent post about Human Trafficking.  It’s a real problem and I for one don’t trust that the Idaho Baptists had honorable intentions.  I honestly just don’t buy that they were seriously taking children, especially those children with living parents to take them across the border to an orphanage.  But let’s face it, there is already probably going to be a teabagging backlash to the government enforcing its own laws.  Conservatives will rail against any foreign power thinking they have control over U.S. citizens, especially with the already apparent spin that they were trying to do something good. 

And I seriously do not think that any human being, no matter how dumb can honestly say “we didn’t believe it was a crime.” And to have the audacity to not only ask not to be prosecuted but to be allowed to continue their work in Haiti. 

So yes, I will say unequivocally, I have no doubt that these kidnappers intended anything less malevolent than the continued colonization of other and that they quite possibly had ever intent to traffic these children.  Especially given that some of the kids with parents were told that the kids would be taken to the D.R. to get an education (a common lie by human traffickers).  Then add that the they kidnappers had nothing set up to take the children in, they were just absconding with them, it’s a very weak claim to say that it was anything other than malicious.  

Maybe if I hadn’t read so many stories lately about human trafficking I’d be a little less cynical, but I have, and people do absolutely terrible things to each other. And the Human Trafficking community is worried that this is exactly what might happen.