Free The Idaho Ten
Read Jay B Gaskill’s
Lost Souls Coffee Shop, an allegory for the human condition.
More on the Bridge to Being Blog at http://jaygaskill.com/blog2/
.
And read Jay Gaskill’s new thriller, The Stranded Ones. More on the Policy Think Site
at http://www.jaygaskill.com/TourTheStrandedOnes.pdf
.
As Published On
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Copyright © 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008,
2009 and 2010 by Jay B. Gaskill
Free the Idaho Ten!
By FRANK BAJAK
The Associated Press
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti | Ten U.S. Baptist missionaries
were charged Thursday with kidnapping for trying to take 33 children out of
Haiti to a hastily arranged refuge.
Their arrests Jan. 30 came just as officials were
trying to protect children from predators amid the chaos of the Jan. 12
earthquake.
[The missionaries] began buying used
clothing and collecting donations from their Central Valley Baptist Church in
Meridian, Idaho. In November, [their organizer] registered the New Life
Children’s Refuge Inc., the nonprofit organization coordinating the rescue
mission. … When the quake struck, [she] recruited other church members to help
kick her plans into high gear. The 10 Americans rushed to Haiti and spent a
week gathering children for the project. Most of the children came from the
village of Callebas, where residents told The
Associated Press that they handed over their children to the Americans because
they were unable to feed or clothe them after the quake. They said the
missionaries promised to educate the children and let relatives visit.
In Haiti it seems that some good deeds are worth a show
trial. Think of it this way. The corruption-riddled government of Haiti is
the closest thing to a failed state among all Pac Rim countries. That government, in the midst in the worst
humanitarian crisis in recent memory, in the face of heroic efforts by
outsiders to restore the shreds of civilized life to its citizens, at a time
when the local government was impotent to restrain rioting by its own people, simply
decided to assert its authority by prosecuting 10 Christians from a small Idaho
town for trying to help some abandoned orphans.
Only a clique of embattled, small minded bureaucrats would seek to
enforce the letter of the law over its spirit and larger purpose (to help
Haiti’s children) as a belated show of petty authority.
It’s one thing to
prevent the removal of children to a better place, quite another to criminally
prosecute their would-be rescuers.
Our Secretary of State has approached the matter with
typical caution:
“On Wednesday, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said
it was ‘unfortunate’ that ‘this group of Americans took matters into their own
hands’ by trying to take the children across the border without proper
documentation. ‘We are engaged in discussions with the Haitian government and
looking for the best way forward on this,’ she added.”
http://www.dispatch.co.za/article.aspx?id=378331
Sorry, that’s
not good enough. A single phone call
from our new president is in order, “Free our citizens. Allow them to return to
the USA now,” should do the trick.
Failing that, a second call to US military personnel is in order.
The bruised egos of shamefully incompetent, small minded government officials
is a secondary consideration.
JBG