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American Morning

Beninese Ambassador Discusses Official Reaction to Suspected Slave Ship

Aired April 18, 2001 - 10:47   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Authorities in the west African nation of Benin say that they're launching an official probe into a suspected slave ship. The Nigerian freighter was believed to be carrying up to 250 children destined for the slave trade, but when the ship docked in a Benin port yesterday, some two dozen children were found on board, along with more than 100 adults.

Now there are questions about exactly what happened.

Joining us now to talk more about the case is Cyrille Oguin, Benin's ambassador to the United States.

Mr. Ambassador, thanks for joining us here today.

CYRILLE OGUIN, BENIN AMBASSADOR TO THE UNITED STATES: Yes, thank you.

KAGAN: What can you tell us about this situation? Do you think this was a big mix-up, do you think the children were on board this ship and dropped off someplace else, or do you think, perhaps, all these children were on another ship that has not been found yet?

OGUIN: No one can tell exactly now, but I think that probes are going on. We are still waiting to know exactly what happened, how the news appears, and I think the government is doing its best to find out the whole truth.

I know what is good is that on this ship there were no slaves, and they were probably children. There were teenagers, maybe job seekers, who were going to a neighboring country to get jobs. So I think we still have to wait know more about the result of the probes going on about the ships.

KAGAN: The idea that there even would be such a slave ship -- the idea that hundreds of thousands of children each year are sold into slavery -- I think, was shocking to many Americans. Do you acknowledge that this is problem for families in your country?

OGUIN: What you have at home is not exactly slavery. This is a system based on some kind of social solidarity whereby a child is considered, in our a system, like a blessing of God who would belong to the whole family, or even to the whole village, so anyone can take care of him. So when you are in a better condition, you may even ask for the son of your brother, your sister, or your cousin, and take him along with you, send him to school, or take care of him. This system has been working a long time.

Unfortunately, in these recent days, there has been some transformation of it which is not good at all, and the government has been strongly condemning such practices. We recognize that it is useful to have a solidarity base whereby we can care for the children of our brother, our sister, and even our friends, but no one is allowed to take children for something else. That's why it's condemned.

And I think what we're doing these days is to educate. The government is strongly educating the parents so that they will do their best to keep their children with them and never allow them to go just with some near traffickers who come and a promise them a better future for their children and take them along for something else. This is strongly condemned at home.

KAGAN: So is the tragic situation that these parents that might be, indeed, very well meaning for children being sold a bill of goods, being told that their children will be taken to a place with better opportunity and instead taken to a place that certainly has not the kind of conditions that you would ever expect any kind of blessing from God to be put into?

OGUIN: Yes, and that is why I say that what we have to do now is to work out some programs which will help these parents to keep their children at home and keep them in the villages, and then build schools for them. We do not have the facilities for them. And also, in Benin, the government has decided, for example, for the past five years, that no parents will pay school fees for their little daughters, for school girls, for example.

But still, we need to support this program. We need support to make this program workable and expounded all about the country. You see when headmasters of schools have little girls, they are not happy to have many of them, because it will not bring them enough money to run their schools. So we need to support all these schools in rural areas. We need to open more schools and health facilities for people who stay at home.

We also need to try our best to make a better life for the parents to give their children. That is what the government is doing.

By the way, we have been working on our legislative system to punish those traffickers, those culprits, who will try and do this bad thing with the children. There are new regulations now at home to combat them, and last May, the government had a national seminar on this issue of child trafficking to get everybody acquainted with it and to stress the origin of it and how it has now become a bad system.

So I think we are all concerned about it at home, and we have been seriously working on it to avoid such things again.

KAGAN: Cyrille Oguin, ambassador to the United States from Benin, I know it's a situation that has drawn attention from around the world, concerned with the children of your country. Sir, thanks for joining us today.

OGUIN: Thank you very much.

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