Brussels - European Union officials on Tuesday condemned as
'irresponsible' the behaviour of a French charity accused of trying
to transport 103 purported orphans from Chad to France.
'This is an isolated incident, the result of irresponsible
conduct,' a spokesman for the EU's executive, the Commission, said.
The charity at the centre of the scandal, Zoe's Ark, has 'no link
at all with the Commission ... There is no link to be made at all
between this isolated incident and the huge humanitarian effort being
made in Eastern Chad, the Central African Republic, Darfur and
Sudan,' he added.
The comment followed reports from Chad that the scandal had
already provoked a backlash against aid workers in the region.
On Monday evening British broadcaster BBC reported that several
aid workers' vehicles had been pelted with stones by angry locals.
Six French employees of the charity were arrested in Chad last
Thursday together with three French journalists and seven Spanish
aircrew as they were about to fly 103 children out of the country.
The aid workers have insisted that they were told the children
were orphans from Sudan's war-torn western region of Darfur, which
borders Chad, and they were taking them out of the country for
medical treatment.
But an investigation, in which UN workers also participated, found
that none of the children had injuries and many of them were in fact
from Chad and were not orphans.
Chadian President Idriss Deby said that the operation was 'simple
kidnapping' and 'child trafficking,' while French President Nicolas
Sarkozy said that the charity's action was 'unacceptable.'
Representatives of Zoe's Ark meanwhile defended their actions as a
genuine humanitarian effort.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
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