Biscuits Lure African Kids to France
IslamOnline.net & News Agencies
Some of the 103 kids were lured away from their parents and were
not orphans. (Reuters)
ABECHE — European aid workers offered poor African kids sweets and
biscuits to lure them to leave their homes before attempting to smuggle them to
France.
"A car came with two whites and one black man who spoke Arabic,"
ten-year-old Mariam, who was one of the group along with her younger sister,
told reporters at an orphanage in Chad's eastern city of Abeche where they are
cared for.
"The driver said come with me, I'll give you some money and biscuits and
then I'll take you home," she recalled.
"We were taken to the white people's house and they gave us medicine --
small white tablets," said the young girl whose mother was dead but father was
still alive .
"I was not ill. All the children were given pills. They told us that we
would no longer be able to go home."
Nine French nationals -- six members of the French charity Zoe's Ark and
three journalists -- were arrested on Thursday as they prepared to fly 103
children, aged 1-10, to France .
The seven members of the charter plane's crew, all Spanish citizens, are
also being held by Chadian police.
France has condemned the operation and the Paris prosecutor's office
opened an investigation last week into "illegal exercise of intermediary
activities with the aim of adoption."
French President Nicolas Sarkozy had phoned Chad President Idriss Deby to
discuss the situation and reiterated his condemnation of the actions of Zoe's
Ark.
Zoe's Ark was founded by a volunteer firefighter, Eric Breteau -- among
those arrested -- to provide assistance to victims of the December 2004 Asian
tsunami .
The Children Rescue operation initially planned to fly 10,000 children
out of Darfur to Europe, a plan attacked as "irresponsible" and amateurish by
adoption and humanitarian groups.
Not Orphans
Zoe's Ark representatives in Paris insist they mounted the Children
Rescue operation in good faith, hoping to evacuate orphans whose lives were at
risk in Darfur, over the Chadian border.
UNICEF said after interviewing the children -- 88 boys and 22 girl --
that most appear to be Chadian, not Darfuri, and that there was no evidence
they were orphans.
Some children told reporters 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," said a young boy called Osman, referring to a
town on the Chad-Sudan border.
"We were taken to the hospital in Adre," he added.
"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," said Osman.
"I would like to go back to find my parents."
A French diplomat has said around 300 families in France and Belgium paid
2,800 to 6,000 euros ($4,000-8,600) per child to have them flown to an airport
in Vatry, east of Paris, where families hoping to welcome them waited Thursday
night in vain.
The French Foreign Ministry 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.
France's Ambassador to Chad Bruno Foucher said the arrested French
nationals would have to face Chadian justice.
"I think this situation is scandalous and our efforts and those of the
French government have been centered on these children who were taken from
their villages, and to make sure this never happens again," he told reporters
in Abeche.
"It's an operation which was completely illegal," Foucher said, adding
that those who took part in this "illegal manipulation" will answer for their
acts in Chad.
Zoe's Ark -- whose members were granted access to French military
aircraft and facilities in Chad -- says the French government did nothing to
stop it.
Aid groups working in eastern Chad, home to some 236,000 cross-border
refugees from Darfur as well as some 173,000 people displaced by a local
rebellion, have firmly condemned the operation
--
Comments:
African Slave Trade all over again!.
Europeans kidnapping young Africans Muslims for Slavery, as their ancestors did
not long ago, kidnapping and trafficking men and women off the West Cast of
Africa to America.
Imagine if Muslims did this, it would have been on front pages, on TV daily
news and even Hollywood movies would quickly be made about this.
They create civil wars and strife in Africa then use that pretext to bring
their troops in to keep the "Piece" and Church-arity groups to pacify Africans
(always Muslims) and offer them rice and the bible! .
أبو يوسف
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