Children should be cut, cooked and eaten. That way we solve the food, population and child-trafficking problems at one go. Jonathan Swift, the author of the popular Gulliver’s Travels, had once proposed this easy solution for dealing with all the problems that adults have with children. Another new crisis involving children has come up in Darfur, Chad. French charities have been found quietly taking away more than 103 kids from their country to Paris. The Times reports that money has changed hands between the charities and French couples who want to adopt the children. But officials representing the charities involved have categorically denied that they ever function as adoption agencies, leave alone taking money. Instead, they have informed the world of their deep humanitarian concerns and how they were only trying to save poor kids from certain death. Well, if the warlords in Africa do not get to the kids, charities from Europe will surely have them. Chad, in the meantime, has arrested nine Frenchmen. Expectedly, white France has erupted in anger. The issue here is not the kids, but rather how black Chad does not know how to take care of her own future. Africa, the Dark Continent, is thwarting the necessary efforts of the civilized and experienced White world in lending a helping hand! Righteous anger indeed from the French.
The French Government has gone through the usual damage-control exercises that governments worldwide go through in such crises. The French secretary of state for human rights Rama Yade has even gone on to say that the government had been aware of the planned operation for several months and had warned l’Arche de Zoe, the accused charity, that it could be breaking the law. If it knew as much, then why did they not prevent the crime from happening? The ambivalence of the French is clear from this. They certainly believe that they can do anything much better than any African can ever manage to do. In their own defense, the French point out how they are trying to save kids from violent war-mafias and the ever-present threat of starvation and famines in Africa. They forget to mention that the present state of affairs in Africa has been created not by Africans but by the colonial masters who ruled the continent with iron fists.
Via: The Times
Image: Schakowsky
