EU condemns "irresponsible" NGO in Chad orphan drama

Oct 30, 2007, 12:30 GMT

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.