Free Republic

HARARE, Zimbabwe, JUNE 18, 2005 (Zenit.org).- Zimbabwe's bishops are increasingly concerned over the government's lack of respect for basic human rights. Since the 1980 elections that followed the ousting of the white-led regime, the country has been ruled by President Robert Mugabe and his ZANU-PF government. The parliamentary elections held last March 31 confirmed the ZANU-PF's control. The March elections, however, were neither "free nor fair," observed a recent report by the nongovernmental organization International Crisis Group. A June 7 report by the group, titled "Post-Election Zimbabwe: What Next?", commented that the elections were manipulated "through a range of legal...

WASHINGTON — Escalating its courtship of a politically powerful constituency, the Bush administration is teaming up with some of the nation's best-known and most influential black clergy to craft a new role for U.S. churches in Africa. The effort was launched last week, when more than two dozen leading African American religious figures met privately with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and senior White House officials at the State Department, according to administration officials and meeting participants. The hourlong session focused largely on how the administration's faith-based initiative could be expanded to combat the spread of HIV and provide help...

BAGRAM AIRFIELD, Afghanistan, May 17, 2005 — One of the easiest and most effective ways U.S. soldiers can win the hearts and minds of Afghans is through the children. Troops from Headquarters and Headquarters Company, Combined Joint Task Force 76, got a chance to win the hearts and minds of young Afghans May 9 during a trip to an orphanage and an all-girl school. The troops, most of whom are based out of the Southern European Task Force on Caserma Ederle in Vicenza, Italy, visited the side-by-side installations in Charikar, a village near Bagram Airfield. While there they handed out...

Continuing a 51-year relationship with a local orphanage, Marines and sailors at Camp Fuji plan to welcome almost 40 children Sunday for an Easter celebration. About 22 children and four teachers from Seishin Orphanage in Tanashi City, with 11 children and their parents from Idu Mama and several children of base employees, have been invited to the Easter egg hunt, egg toss and a visit from the Easter bunny (Gunnery Sgt. Brent Dorrough), said Fuji’s chaplain, Lt. j.g. Ned Alderman. “Our Marines love being with the kids,” Alderman said. The base welcomes the orphanage children to events throughout the year....

U.S. Soldier Adopts Disabled Iraqi Boy - In 2003, while volunteering at an orphanage for disabled children in Baghdad, National Guard Capt. Scott Southworth met Ala'a, a young Iraqi boy who could not walk because of cerebral palsy. Now Ala'a, nearly 10, lives with Southworth in Wisconsin, and a doctor recently gave the pair great news: Ala'a soon may be able to walk. 'Back to Reality' On his tour of duty in Iraq, Southworth, now 32, was helping to train Iraqi police, a difficult job in a war zone and the triple-digit Baghdad heat. "At the end of those days,...

MAUSTON, Wis. - Capt. Scott Southworth took his soldiers to a Baghdad orphanage in 2003 to befriend the children. Immediately, a small boy with cerebral palsy befriended him, crawling across the floor to sit next to him. Within a few weeks, Southworth knew he had to bring the boy, Ala'a, home to Wisconsin. More than a year later, Southworth returned to Iraq to pick up the 11-year-old and take him back to Mauston, where Southworth now works as Juneau County district attorney. The single 32-year-old knew the alternative for Ala'a was life in a government orphanage with little chance of...

ANGEL-faced orphans Cham-ilka and Gemhani lost their mum and their home to the tsunami but now face a greater horror—being sold to sex beasts by their grandad. The terrified sisters survived the killer wave after it struck the village of Hikkaduwa in Sri Lanka. But after their dad lost his mind with grief and fled the country, they were left in the clutches of evil Aruma Somadasa. Now he wants to sell them to paedophiles for £5,000 each. "You can take both girls, take them abroad if you want, or take just one," he said. "You can do what you...

By Mike E. O'Neal From April to June of 1994 in Rwanda, 800,000 innocent men, women and children were systematically slaughtered for no other reason than their ethnicity. The international community did nothing, blatantly ignoring the genocide pact signed after World War II. In 1884, the Berlin Conference allocated Rwanda as a German colony, though no known white man had ever been there. The Germans, and Belgians after them, sowed the seeds of systematic ethnic strife, using the Rwandan Tutsis to control the Rwandan Hutus. In 1962, France helped the Hutus gain their independence, igniting one of history's most explosive...

A CANADIAN Islamic group is vowing to prevent the adoption by Christian families of Muslim children orphaned in the tsunami disaster. "Canadian Muslims will not allow that the custody of Muslim orphan children to be given to Christian families or any non-Muslim families," reads a release issued yesterday by the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada. The release goes on to say Christian missionaries are kidnapping Muslim children in Indonesia. "It is now proven that the Christian missionaries do not help people on humanitarian grounds," the release states. "They help people in order to exploit their needs and convert them to...

Tsunami orphans getting recruited by Terror Organizations and relief aids not reaching those who need the same in Sri Lanka and Acheh UNICEF reported a very disturbing information. According to a report, UNICEF complained that Tamil Tigers are recruiting innocent orphaned children, victims of tsunami, into the terror camps. Similar reports are coming from Sumatra. In Acheh and other parts of Indonesia, the terrorists and the human traffickers are also targeting the children. The Indonesian Government today asked all foreign military personnel leave no later than March, 2005. In Sri Lanka, there are some major problems. Tamil Tigers control the...

The Virginia-based missionary group WorldHelp has dropped its plans to place 300 Muslim "tsunami orphans" in a Christian children's home, the group's president, the Rev. Vernon Brewer, told news agencies Thursday. The children were still in the Muslim province of Aceh and had not been airlifted to Jakarta, Indonesia's capital, according to an electronic mail message under Brewer's name circulating among his supporters. In an interview Tuesday for an article published in Thursday's editions of The Washington Post , Brewer said that the children already had been airlifted to Jakarta and that the Indonesian government had given permission for them...

The Liverpool children's home that inspired the Beatles' hit song is to close, officials said Wednesday. The psychedelic single "Strawberry Fields Forever" was released in February 1967 with "Penny Lane" on the reverse side and quickly made it to No. 2 in the British charts, but it was kept out of the top slot by Engelbert Humperdinck's "Release Me." John Lennon wrote the song's dreamy lyrics about a time in his childhood when he lived near the Strawberry Fields orphanage. It has been suggested that Lennon felt a kinship with the orphans after he was abandoned by his father and...

The staff of Unicef’s Sri Lanka operation are in their Colombo offices dealing as best they can with a flood of desperate people, people at the end of their tether, people in overwhelming need of immediate help. CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, for instance. Ms Amanpour, or at least her producer, wants two orphans, preferably brothers who have lost at least six other members of their families, please, on the coast road between Bentota and Galle, tomorrow after two o’clock local time for a Sri Lanka — Land In Turmoil prime-time special. It is now 7.30 p.m. When approached by his assistant...

Adoption groups are advising it is unlikely children orphaned by the Asian tsunami disaster would be repatriated to Australia. Agencies including Centrelink and support groups in the ACT have received calls and emails from people wishing to adopt victims of the earthquake event. Julia Rollings, from the Adoptive Families Association, says it is often inappropriate for children affected by war and natural disaster to be adopted overseas. She says the inquiries are well-meaning but are often unrealistic, especially in the short-term. "Inter-country adoption is only appropriate for children who can't be placed in a suitable family within the country of...

Surely, there will be many orphans from this disaster. My wife and I might adopt one of these children if the process is expedited. Has anyone heard anything about this? It may be too soon, but for these children, the sooner the better.

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) - Grieving families of children who perished from tsunamis in Sri Lanka are taking away orphans from the disaster without approval, a move denounced Friday by the government and an aid organization. An official from the Department of Child Care and Protection, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he had heard of a dozen cases in Galle and Matara, on Sri Lanka's southern coast, in which orphaned children had been taken in by families that lost loved ones. He asked families to stop. The southern coast took the main brunt of Sunday's massive earthquake-generated tsunamis. As...

Minneapolis (AP) Four sisters from the Ukraine who were separated through adoption were reunited Wednesday at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, and they will now all live near each other in Willmar. Marina and Sveta Kyryluk were greeted at the airport by their sisters, Nadya Roberts and Anya Benson -- who were already living with their adoptive families from Willmar -- and their new parents. Marina, 13, is the new daughter of Dawn and Ross Marcus while Sveta, 16, will be adopted by Sharon and Tony Cruze. Nadya Roberts, 10, is the daughter of Eric and Stacey Roberts and Anya Benson,...

NAVALADY, Sri Lanka, Dec. 29 -- Two hundred yards from the beach, in the orphanage he had built, Dayalan Sanders lounged in his bed early Sunday morning. He was thinking, he said, about the sermon he was due to deliver in the chapel in half an hour. A few yards away, most of the 28 children under his care were still in their rooms, grooming themselves for services.

For the dozens of Palestinian orphans that Yasser Arafat adopted, brought up and indulged, his demise in a Paris hospital was a very personal torment, as they look back on a blissful childhood. Without ever signing official adoption papers, the veteran leader took personal charge of about 66 children, most of them left parentless after the massacres of the Palestinian camps of Tall Zaatar, and Sabra and Chatilla. "It was beautiful. I have very sweet memories," said Ahmed Ramzi Khadura, who became an Arafat "son" after being separated from his natural father, who lives in Lebanon with 12 other kids....