Church group in Haiti Hurts, not Helps

A group of ten Baptists volunteers from Idaho traveled to Haiti to try and help the newly orphaned children. Sounds like a good cause, right? Ah, but of course there is a catch. Their “rescue” involved taking children from the country, without the government’s permission. For the record, that isn’t charity. It’s human trafficking.

The most disturbing thing about this is that not all of these kids were orphans. And these people knew it.

The orphanage where the children were later taken said some of the kids have living parents, who were apparently told the children were going on a holiday from the post-quake misery……

One [8-year-old] girl was crying, and saying, “I am not an orphan. I still have my parents.”

Laura Silsby the groups spokesperson, claimed that she hadn’t been following news reports while in Haiti, and didn’t think she needed the Haitian government’s permission to take them out of the country. This statement seems either dishonest, or woefully ignorant. Did she really think she could just haul children out of the country and their government wouldn’t care? I can’t claim to know much about the Haitian government; it’s not exactly a common avenue of study for most of us. But despite what Silsby seems to think, the Haitian people don’t live in free-for-all anarchy. They have laws, leaders. They have a prime minister. It strikes me as somewhat racist to assume that Haiti won’t have rules about kidnapping it’s children.

An article on NPR brings up the idea that some families may have given over their kids willingly, to have a chance at a better life. It isn’t unheard of in third world countries like Haiti.

Marie Rita Pierre said, “I would allow one of these groups to take one of my children. My youngest daughter wants to go to university. We can’t help her. I think its good groups come here to take kids, even though most of the time they will lose touch with their families.”

That is an extremely difficult decision fort a parent to make. And while this may have been the case for some of the children, what about the parents who were told their kids were “going on a holiday”? A holiday implies they will return safe and sound to their families once the country is more stable. Not given to strangers looking to do some kidnapping for Christ.

The group claims they were only trying to do what is right. I have no doubt the mean it. The problem is, their warped ideal of what is “right” is highly subjective. They feel that taking little kids from their parents and placing them with Christian families is right.

“One of the reasons that our church wanted to help is because we believe that Christ has asked us to take the gospel of Jesus Christ to the whole world, and that includes children,” Henry, the senior pastor, said.

However, I feel this is wrong. As do the Haitian government, the local religious leaders, and pretty much anyone with a sense of decency. Max Beauvoir, head of Haiti’s Voodoo Priest’s Association, summed it up quite nicely:

“There are many who come here with religious ideas that belong more in the time of the Inquisition. These types of people believe they need to save our souls and our bodies from ourselves. We need compassion, not proselytizing now, and we need aid — not just aid going to people of the Christian faith.”

If you still want to defend these people, do this for me: I want you to imagine that you are a parent of one of these kids. Your home has been destroyed. Fire, screaming, smoke. Nearly everyone you know and love is dead. You stumble from the wreckage with what’s left of your  family, looking for help. Somehow, in the panic, your child dissapears. There by your side one moment, then gone the next. Imagine the panic at losing your only surving loved one, the last thing you had to cling to. Or even worse, what if some rescuers volunteered to take your baby somewhere safe, until things calmed down. You are so grateful to these kind people, so selflessly helping you, until you find out your baby is in an orphanage, and they had no intention of bringing them home.  How would you feel?

Share and Enjoy:
  • Print
  • Google Bookmarks
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • StumbleUpon
  • Reddit

24 thoughts on “Church group in Haiti Hurts, not Helps

  1. “They feel that taking little kids from their parents and placing them with Christian families is right.”

    The particularly crazy part is that, according to the CIA World Factbook, Haiti is 80% Catholic, and 16% Protestant. That’s 96% Christian*. So it’s not like these people have never freakin’ heard of Jesus. I saw another news story about a group gathering funding to bring Haiti like 100,000 Bibles. Trust me, they’ve got Bibles. If you really wanna help, you’d do better to just teach people to read in general and bring up the 52% literacy rate (thanks again, Factbook!) Or how about bringing some food, medicine, clothes, tents, or blankets on that giant shipping palette you needed for all your Bibles.

    *Also according to the Factbook, roughly half the population practices Voodoo. I really have no idea what this entails, but I’m sure it makes kidnapping their kids completely okay.

  2. I don’t know enough about the situation to know if this group was doing something terribly wrong (human trafficking) or if they were just guilty of lapses in red tape.

    The post, though, seems to undercut its own ground for judgment. Kimi says “their warped ideal of what is “right” is highly subjective”. But is your presumably un-warped “feeling” that this is “wrong” also highly subjective? By what standard is it warped or not warped? By what standard is it right or wrong? Are those standards also highly subjective? If so, then how can you make any judgment at all? By calling an act or “ideal” warped, aren’t you thereby saying such things are not “highly subjective”?

    James – I don’t know anything about these particular Baptist groups, but it is a distinct possibility that these Baptists do not think that Catholics are actually Christian (that is a surprisingly pervasive view among Baptists). Point is, they might well think that Haitian Catholics need to hear about Jesus.

    Anyway, I agree with James that some food and water and medical aid is what is in order here. I prefer the general Catholic mode of evangelization — Catholics tend to evangelize by their works of love rather than “bible beating”. Mother Theresa once remarked that she rarely mentions Jesus in her ministry unless she is asked. She simply cared for those that needed care. If and when people would ask her ‘why are you doing this for me?’ she would talk about the life of Christ. But evangelization should always be mediated through acts of charity (works of love).

  3. You don’t have to apologize to me, Kimi! I quite agree that human trafficking is wrong. My point was that you did yourself no service by weakening the point with all sorts of mushy relativistic language like “feel” or “highly subjective”. Nothing “subjective” about it – it is wrong. If you introduce that relativist talk, then you hang yourself and undercut the very grounds of your justifiable moral outrage at human trafficking. That was my point.

    I am willing to wait to hear more about this particular case before I pass judgment. I don’t know that we yet know enough to say that the group was guilty of human trafficking.

  4. C’mon, Kimi. You’ve been called out. I, for one, would like you to at least attempt to answers Kleiner’s objection instead of hiding behind your usual flippant and shallow responses. You wrote your inflammatory piece, now convince us you’ve done it responsibly. (Or are you only able to criticize others for not doing that?) Accountability’s a bitch, right?

  5. To be clear – I did not suggest that Kimi initial post was inflammatory. I just noted that her relativist language found therein undercut the ground of her moral outrage. You can’t have your cake and eat it too – if things are “radically subjective” then you have no grounds to condemn the actions of others. I don’t think Kimi’s reply to my comment really responded to that objection, but I was not particularly bothered by that.

    Granted, had this group been a non-religious organization I rather doubt we’d have seen a post about it on this blog. I frankly don’t see that their religious affiliation really has anything to do with the matter. But there is nothing more predictable than contemporary atheists jumping on anything that opens the door for expressing outrage at religious groups. But, again, that was not the point of my above post. If they are guilty of trafficking (and the apparent reluctance of the US govt to push for their release is a bad sign) then Kimi’s outrage was justified and should be shared by all.

  6. If Taz wants me to defend it, then ok, I’d be happy to. Sure, my view that kidnapping these Haitian kids is wrong is subjective. However, when it comes to hurting others, I believe actions can actually be considered ethically wrong. But I usually try to avoid philosophical debates at all cost, so my knowledge of philosophy is limited. I don’t want to speculate too much.

    But the point I was trying to make wasn’t that they are wrong for thinking this way. Sure, I believe they are, but others may disagree. My point is that they broke the law. They can’t hurt someone else just they feel they are in the right. Feeling angry doesn’t justify punching someone in the face. You have to respect the boundaries and wishes of others if you want to live any sort of decent society.

    I hope that clears up what I was going for.

  7. Oh, and this group is in prison now, pending trial. I’m looking forward to seeing how they rule. Haiti has had a long, troubled history with human trafficking, and they are kind of touchy about it. Btw, I’m not using that phrase for shock value. That is actually what they are being prosecuted for.

  8. Since I cannot resist the teach-able moment:

    I would re-assert, Kimi, that you are not helping yourself at all. In fact, you appear to be simply contradicting yourself. If you look at what you say in your 2nd and 3rd sentences above, you essentially say ‘I think morality is subjective but I also don’t think it is subjective’. I don’t know why people are so attached to this view that “morality is relative”. Most people that say things like this don’t really believe it anyway. Kimi provides us with a striking example of that just above.

    Kimi may prefer to avoid philosophical debates, but a bit of philosophy would help here. I think Kimi is a utilitarian (actions are wrong because they hurt others) without quite realizing it. This is a fine view – not everyone agrees with it but many do and it is a coherent moral philosophy. Actions are wrong when they cause more harm than good, right when they cause more good than harm (usually understood in terms of pleasure or pain).

    An interesting question – but a philosophical debate that Kimi might prefer to avoid – is whether or not human trafficking always causes more harm than good. In other words, could you make a utilitarian argument defending the human trafficking (at least in some cases)? I think you could. (By the way, I am not a utilitarian in large part for precisely this reason — it is too easy to make utilitarian reasoning defend morally monstrous acts, like human trafficking).

  9. “In other words, could you make a utilitarian argument defending the human trafficking…”

    Indeed, it’s possibly that this Baptist group was employing some kind of crude utilitarian calculus–that is, if they really believed that by kidnapping the kids and raising them in their brand of Christianity, they’d be saving them from eternal torment in Hell.

  10. Ok, let me try this again, then. Yes, morality is subjective. That’s kind of a given. But you can’t live like that. You get anarchy. So as much fun as this discussion is for you guys, it is ultimately pointless. No amount of philosophizing is going to make human trafficking legal.

  11. Also, I really do not appreciate being called flippant and shallow because I don’t enjoy philosophy debates, which is essentially all this blog has turned into. I prefer the practical side of atheism, and if I don’t care to talk about the subjectivity of morality, it’s because I find it boring. Sorry, but don’t insult me because my avenues of interest differ from yours.

  12. Kimi – I just want to make clear that I never insulted you. If anything I said was taken as an insult it was entirely unintentional. My posts only meant to encourage consistency and reasonability. It may not be your bag, but I do think that a certain amount of philosophy is simply unavoidable. Philosophy is the study of what is good and what is true and what is beautiful. The “practical side” of life depends on convictions about these things. Our own actions/choices and our judgments of other’s actions/choices depend on convictions about the truth and the good of man. Philosophy is not, then, an arcane discipline for the few. It is for everyone and is in some sense necessary for everyone.

  13. Jon – I don’t even think their utilitarian analysis need to have introduced the salvation aspect. There are widespread reports of Haitians giving their children away in hopes that they might have a better life in America. Those that are doing this seem to be engaging in a kind of utilitarian cost/benefit analysis.

  14. Kleiner,

    I’m pretty sure Kimi was talking about Taz up above.

    While this group of kids from the news story did include a few true orphans, and there are Haitians who are trying to get their kids into the US despite the real possibility of never seeing them, it has emerged that the Baptist group lied to some of these parents about their intentions for their kids. Parents were told that they were taking the kids out of the country on a temporary holiday until the country is settled out a bit, and then they were bringing them back. The reality is that the missionaries put kids whose parents are alive and well in an orphanage with the intention of permanently adopting them to “Christian families”.

    This is on top of them not realizing that they need to file paperwork with the government of Haiti to take Haitian citizens out of the country (an oversight which actually strikes me as vaguely racist). Their failure to do so *is* human trafficking, and that’s not just inflammatory language. I’m not too sure on the details of the pending court case, but I very much doubt a Haitian judge (if they’re tried in Haiti) would set a precedent that their human trafficking laws apply only some of the time, considering their previously mentioned history with this issue.

    This is the sort of discussion I had hoped would take place here. Human trafficking is wrong, we all agree on that. If you think atheists are hypocrites, or have no basis for thinking so, or whatever, fine. I think that’s a breathtakingly wrong position, but we’re getting nowhere on it. And honestly, it’s nowhere near as interesting as the essay I just linked to.

    • I do hope that the concrete suggestions made in the article you link to above are followed. I found next to nothing to disagree with in that article. And philosophical speculation about the nature of morality doesn’t do much for the Haitians right now. That doesn’t make the discussion worthless though.
      I cannot resist adding that “we’re getting nowhere” on the morality question because SHAFTers have never, to this point, presented a coherent account of man/humanism/morality. Until someone does, SHAFTers are open to criticism for having a mere ‘nay-saying’ position with no actual substance of its own. (Hey, you guys are like the Republicans!! :) )

  15. “If you think atheists are hypocrites, or have no basis for thinking so, or whatever, fine. I think that’s a breathtakingly wrong position,”

    I can see how you can be offended about it, but I don’t know how you can see the position breathtakingly wrong.
    We are talking about the basis of morality. While we both might agree that human trafficking is wrong – the atheist and theist have both different groundings to believe so. I believe that the atheist that argues that human trafficking is objectively wrong is inconsistent with the groundings in which his or her’s worldview grants them. A worldview that doesn’t grant for a higher morality with grounding in anything other than subjectivity. It is intellectually dishonest if you don’t believe in objective morality to ask about the objective evil in the world.

    • I never said I was offended, or that I believe that morality is objective–in the same way as, say, the theory of relativity.

    • personal divine command theory ;) jk

      Lately, I think I’ve bought into some of Kant’s ideas.

  16. Pingback: Sunday in Outer Blogness: Your Brain is Playing Tricks Edition! | Main Street Plaza

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>