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When does a gift become a curse?
Unfortunately, when a Meridian woman doing admirable medical mission work in another part of the world simply tries to go home.
Candi Dunlap, in the country as part of a team from Meridian’s Fifteenth Avenue Baptist Church, has sat in a Macedonian jail since Sept. 28, when she and her group were at an airport to catch a flight back to the U.S.
Why the long jail stint? Was she stealing sensitive security documents? Was she smuggling weapons or drugs? Was she passing through the country with a fake identity and passport? Absolutely, unequivocally, no.
Dunlap, also a nurse practitioner at Oktibbeha County Hospital in Starkville, was carrying some coins given to her as a gift by someone she served. Some coins. Fellow church members contend she had no idea the coins couldn’t leave the country.
Macedonian authorities apparently interpret one person’s generosity as smuggling of artifacts out of the country, so Dunlap has needlessly sat in a cell for several weeks, no doubt surrounded by real criminals whose deeds are much more worth law enforcement’s time.
Dunlap faced trial earlier this week, and a judge could rule Friday on whether she can be released. Not only should she be allowed to go home, she never should have been jailed this long. This is yet another triumph of bureaucratic red tape and misguided, zero-tolerance laws over common sense.
The State Department spells out pretty clearly on its website how Macedonia deals with certain types of goods leaving the country, noting customs officials there “may enforce strict regulations on the temporary importation to or exportation … of certain items; such items include those deemed to be of historical value or significance.”
Those kinds of guidelines certainly aren’t unusual, as customs laws go. And visitors to foreign nations do need to know the customs standards of the lands they’re visiting in advance.
But there’s no sign that Dunlap has any criminal intent, intends to profit from the coins or is a security risk. If Macedonian authorities have such evidence, they need to release it. Otherwise, they’ve accomplished nothing in the last three weeks except potentially traumatizing a woman who traveled across the globe out of the kindness of her heart. That’s three weeks of limited contact with the people she loves and an endless amount of worry in her mind. If Dunlap is allowed to go home, will she return as readily the next time her church takes a mission trip to Macedonia?
It can take weeks or months just to extradite an accused criminal from one state to another. So imagine the byzantine maze U.S. officials have to go through to secure the release of an American citizen accused of violating another nation’s laws?
It should never have come to this. Authorities should have checked Dunlap’s paperwork, taken the coins and sent her on her way. Instead, Dunlap has spent three lonely, exhausting weeks detained in a faraway land, while Macedonia may now have a reputation, fairly or not, as a country not always kind to outsiders trying to help their people. End this senseless detention. The country will have its coins back, and Dunlap will have learned her lesson, even if she shouldn’t have had to learn it in this manner.
Send Dunlap home, Macedonia, and send her home soon.
Unfortunately, when a Meridian woman doing admirable medical mission work in another part of the world simply tries to go home.
Candi Dunlap, in the country as part of a team from Meridian’s Fifteenth Avenue Baptist Church, has sat in a Macedonian jail since Sept. 28, when she and her group were at an airport to catch a flight back to the U.S.
Why the long jail stint? Was she stealing sensitive security documents? Was she smuggling weapons or drugs? Was she passing through the country with a fake identity and passport? Absolutely, unequivocally, no.
Dunlap, also a nurse practitioner at Oktibbeha County Hospital in Starkville, was carrying some coins given to her as a gift by someone she served. Some coins. Fellow church members contend she had no idea the coins couldn’t leave the country.
Macedonian authorities apparently interpret one person’s generosity as smuggling of artifacts out of the country, so Dunlap has needlessly sat in a cell for several weeks, no doubt surrounded by real criminals whose deeds are much more worth law enforcement’s time.
Dunlap faced trial earlier this week, and a judge could rule Friday on whether she can be released. Not only should she be allowed to go home, she never should have been jailed this long. This is yet another triumph of bureaucratic red tape and misguided, zero-tolerance laws over common sense.
The State Department spells out pretty clearly on its website how Macedonia deals with certain types of goods leaving the country, noting customs officials there “may enforce strict regulations on the temporary importation to or exportation … of certain items; such items include those deemed to be of historical value or significance.”
Those kinds of guidelines certainly aren’t unusual, as customs laws go. And visitors to foreign nations do need to know the customs standards of the lands they’re visiting in advance.
But there’s no sign that Dunlap has any criminal intent, intends to profit from the coins or is a security risk. If Macedonian authorities have such evidence, they need to release it. Otherwise, they’ve accomplished nothing in the last three weeks except potentially traumatizing a woman who traveled across the globe out of the kindness of her heart. That’s three weeks of limited contact with the people she loves and an endless amount of worry in her mind. If Dunlap is allowed to go home, will she return as readily the next time her church takes a mission trip to Macedonia?
It can take weeks or months just to extradite an accused criminal from one state to another. So imagine the byzantine maze U.S. officials have to go through to secure the release of an American citizen accused of violating another nation’s laws?
It should never have come to this. Authorities should have checked Dunlap’s paperwork, taken the coins and sent her on her way. Instead, Dunlap has spent three lonely, exhausting weeks detained in a faraway land, while Macedonia may now have a reputation, fairly or not, as a country not always kind to outsiders trying to help their people. End this senseless detention. The country will have its coins back, and Dunlap will have learned her lesson, even if she shouldn’t have had to learn it in this manner.
Send Dunlap home, Macedonia, and send her home soon.
So Macedonia sounds a little harsh doesn't it.
But then Goce below provides a little more insight:
Originally posted by Гоце Панговски
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