a slap on the wrist for attempting to smuggle children out of Haiti?

[SemperEadem]

The judge hearing the case is basically giving these people a slap on the wrist for knowingly coming into Haiti to smuggle children out of the country and dump them in the DR, which has a long, long history of conflict and aggression against Haiti.

http://www.allempires.com/article/index.php?q=conflict_haiti_dominican :
In fact the two countries merely coexist on this small island -- conflict arises almost everyday between the two governments. These cultural differences may be at the root of the long-standing Haitian-Dominican conflict culminating in the murder of more than 25,000 Haitians in 1937 by the Dominican dictator, Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molinas.

What is the explanation for these cultural differences? How did the island the Tainos called Hayti come to be divided into two countries, and inhabited by two peoples of such different cultures? A look at the colonial past of Haiti and the Dominican Republic contains the answer to these questions. Both countries have a colonial background that has made them into what they are today. The division of the island into Haiti and the Dominican Republic is a perfect example of how colonialism and the plantation system shaped the geography, demography and psychology of the New World; shaping it in ways that eventually led to perpetual friction, including the Haitian-Dominican conflict of today.

--snip--
When Trujillo was elected president (of DR) he defined the Dominican Republic as a Hispanic nation, Catholic and White, as opposed to Afro-French Haiti which largely practiced "vodou" as a religion. He portrayed Haiti as both a threat and the antithesis of the Dominican Republic. He dreaded the growing influence of Haitian culture in Dominican territory. His fear of Haitian "darkening" of the Dominican population led him to conduct a policy of "Dominicanness" which ultimately led to the murder of more than 25,000 Haitian on the Haitian-Dominican border. After having signed a boundary agreement between the Dominican government and Haiti, Trujillo realizing that the people on the border, Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent, spoke mainly creole and used the Haitian gourde as their currency. He undertook to define Haitians as racially separate from Dominicans. Under Operation Perejil, Trujillo killed thousands of Haitians and dark skinned Dominicans residing on the border zone. These people were asked to pronounce the word "perejil", believed to be hard for Haitians because of the "r" and the "j". Everyone who failed at the test was systematically killed.

Years later, the Dominican president and Trujillo’s ideological heir, Joaquim Balaguer, continued his policy of discrimination and racism against the Haitians. In his book, La Isla al Reves, he outlined his hopes and fears for the Dominican nation. This book is a monument to the fear that Haiti, as an Afro-Caribbean nation, instilled both in the author and the Dominican people. It warns of Haitian imperialism as a "plot against the independence of Santo Domingo and against the American population of Spanish origin". Haiti is a threat primarily for "biological reasons", its people multiplying themselves "nearly as rapidly as plants.".

So, knowing this, am I supposed to just swallow the fact that these kidnappers, who clearly are not Haitian and don't speak French, consulted with a Dominican "lawyer" who has been exposed as 1. not being a lawyer and 2. having a shady past concerning child trafficking, to pack 33 children into a bus and barrel their way across the boarder into the DR, which has had a long and sordid past regarding their treatment and estimation of Haitians going back 200+ years, and they did not bother to have the parents of the children legally sign away their rights, not bother to secure passports for the children, not bother to even talk to any Haitian government official before they left the US? Really? God's work? They have no good explanation for why they did not follow legal procedures because they considered the Haitian government to be not important or necessary. Their racist attitude took over and now they got snatched up a notch.

Dismissing the authority and sovereignty of Haiti just because it's in crisis right now and taking the children of ill-informed parents out of a country with no paperwork or passports-- really, nothing more than a smile and a nod--is premeditation. It's hubris overload. It's pride gone before destruction and the haughty spirit before the fall. They need to sit in an Haitian prison for about 25 years and the US needs to prosecute them for conspiracy to kidnap and transport children across international borders.

[Number23]

1. This whole story is disgusting.

There was an article in GD last week or so that said that the woman who was the chief smuggler has lied and tried to worm her way into other people's adoptions before. Apparently, she even went so far as to pretend to be friends with Americans who were in the process of adopting Haitian children and showing up at the orphanages trying to get the children saying that she was there "on behalf" of the American adoptees when they had given her no such authorization to get the children. Here's the GD OP here - http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=7663042

The fact that she whipped up this alleged orphanage that she's supposed to be running over the course of a few weeks, lied to the parents of the children telling them that she was taking the kids to amusement parks and boarding schools in order to get them away from their parents and then didn't have the parents sign the appropriate papers should be all that anyone needs to take into consideration. She is a con artist, but because she's white and American and her victims were desperate, destitute blacks, justice ain't gonna be served here. Maybe some "street justice", but not any legal one.

They need to sit in an Haitian prison for about 25 years and the US needs to prosecute them for conspiracy to kidnap and transport children across international borders.

Most definitely agree. Even if you do buy the whole "the rest of us didn't know what was going on" angle, at the very least Silsby, the chief smuggler, needs to be getting real familiar with a Haitian prison right about now.

[Blue_Tires]

2. funny to see all her defenders vanish as more rocks get kicked over