Baptist Do-Gooders in Trouble in Haiti

Call it vigilante relief work or kidnapping, 10 American Baptists are in jail in Port-au-Prince after attempting to take 33 children out of Haiti in what they claim was an effort to “do the right thing.” —JCL

The Guardian:

A group of 10 American Baptists were being held in Port-au-Prince today after trying to take 33 children out of Haiti.

The church group, most of them from Idaho, allegedly lacked the proper documents when they were arrested on Friday night in a bus along with children aged from two months to 12 years who had survived the earthquake.

The group said they were setting up an orphanage across the border in the Dominican Republic.

“In this chaos the government is in right now, we were just trying to do the right thing,” the group’s spokeswoman, Laura Silsby, said at the judicial police headquarters in Port-au-Prince, where the Americans were being held pending a hearing tomorrow before a judge.

Read more

youtube.com via AP

Laura Silsby, the American Baptists’ spokeswoman, comments in Port-au-Prince after 10 members of the group were detained.