Radio Australia Today Editorial

Haiti Adoption arrests. A Stolen Generation?

1 February 2010

They work fast, these adopt-a-baby people.

Fast, but not necessarily thoroughly.

On Friday, two and a half weeks after the Haiti earthquake, police arrested 10 members of a US Christian group at the Haiti border with the Dominican Republic. It’s alleged they tried to leave the country with 33 children survivors.

On the weekend the five men and five women were charged with child trafficking.

It’s all mistake, the would-be adopters say, but they had no papers legitimising the adoptions, so for all the world they appeared to be a group that has abducted children. Trying to rush them over the border isn’t a good look. Certainly the Haiti government is furious. One government minister called them abductions, not adoptions.

When you learn that some of the children say that their parents are still alive, the arguments of the adoption team seem to weaken further.

The question is: why are people coming into a foreign country and whisking children away? Do they really believe they have a right to do this? Do they really believe this is the right thing for confusedm devastated children?

Here in Australia we have a sad story of governments taking indigenous children away from their parents. The children became known as the Stolen Generation.

Of course the situation in Haiti is a little different. Haiti is in disaster mode since the earthquake. People have been starving, and laws are being flouted. In this situation, it is the vulnerable: children, the sick and older people, who suffer first.

But moving children away from their family networks, and the only world they have known has its own dangers.

Just ask any member of the Stolen Generation.

- Phil Kafcaloudes