Talk Radio News Service: News, Politics, Media

By Monique Cala - University of New Mexico/Talk Radio News Service

Haiti’s Ambassador to the U.S. Raymond Joseph said at a press conference on Thursday that he agreed with a Haitian judge's decision to keep ten missionaries in prison for allegedly trying to take 33 orphaned children out of the country and into neighboring Dominican Republic illegally.

“I am quite sure they will be released, but at the same time the world has been put on notice that Haitian children are not cattle,” said Joseph speaking at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. “And for those who said there was no government in Haiti, I am quite sure that the arrest of these people and their trial proves the government exists.”

The Ambassador highlighted progress being made in Haiti one month after a 7.0 earthquake devastated the tiny island nation, killing hundreds of thousands. The government is doing its job to take care of its people, assured Joseph.

“Despite what’s being said about the government [and] about the corruption, this time the Haitians have been working together to do the right thing,” he said. “The government, which a lot of people said was absent in the first three days, has been working pretty well.”

As the number of people displaced by the earthquake reaches near one million, Haitian President Rene Preval has called for 200,000 more tents to be set up around the country.

When asked whether Preval should have assumed a more active public profile during his country' distress, Joseph said that the President was a shy man and has been changed by the tragedy.

“He likes to work behind the scenes. People don’t know how shocked he was. However, he is getting over it,” said Joseph. “I want to see him in the field picking up the shovel, even symbolically.”