U.S. Man Freed After Incarceration in Haiti on Suspicion of Creating a Zombie
This story is so outrageous that it can be hard to believe it’s real, but it apparently is.
A man by the name of Paul Waggoner sold his business and went to Haiti in the aftermath of its tragic earthquake last year to help with the relief efforts. After a subsequent aftershock, the hospital he was assisting at was deluged with patients, one of whom, a small boy, died. His father, lacking money for a funeral, allowed the hospital to dispose of the body, and all seemed normal, until the grieving relative came back and accused Waggoner of, amongst other things, turning his son into a Zombie:
An American man that was held in a Haitian prison under investigation for turning a man’s son into a zombie, has been freed and returned to the United States.
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According to Waggoner, the father, Philistin, who had brought his son, Keevins, didn’t have money for a funeral, and he asked the hospital to take care of the boy’s body. Without a refrigerated room, the hospital incinerates the deceased after about 12 hours.
Waggoner said that even though there was a death certificate authenticated by the hospital, the father came back the following day and accused Waggoner of harboring the child, harvesting his organs, and keeping him in a secret place.
When Philistin first filed his case, a Haitian judge looked at the evidence and dismissed the charges. “It was completely taken care of the first time,” said Waggoner.
Waggoner left the country fearing retribution from the from Philistin, but returned soon after. Philistin had taken his case to court again, and a judge unaware of another judge having already dismissed the charges, decided to open a three-month investigation into the allegations. Haitian law allows defendants to be imprisoned without charge during investigations.
Waggoner was eventually freed and has since sensibly left the country, though he wants to return to help at some point in the future. In all my years working for Zombie Rights, however, I have never heard of persecution quite like this. A man, here in the 21st century, held without trial on the mere *suspicion* of having reanimated a human being? Just the accusation of helping in the revival of a Differently Animated individual is enough to get yourself thrown in a cell?
Shocking and appalling; truly a civil rights outrage for our age. Why, I find myself wondering, is it even a crime to help create a Zombie at all? Why should the state prohibit all good-natured necromancers or voodoo practitioners from creating Zombies? What business is it of a government to issue a blanket proclamation and prohibit the birth of an entire class of people?
The prejudice here, the institutionalized hate and rancor against the Undead, is truly tragic. Why any country, let alone one with such a storied history with the Differently Animated (though far from an untroubled one) would institute such a vicious state of super-apartheid against Zombiekind is completely beyond me.
What’s next, I wonder. Will Haiti prohibit specific races of ‘undesirable’ Living people from being created within its borders? Would that finally stir the international community to action?
Consider this a ZRC travel advisory for Haiti: it is simply not safe, nor is it wise, for Zombies or their allies to travel to the country for any reason at the current time.
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For all it’s civil rights faults, thank god we live in a country were at least zombification isn’t illegal.
It isn’t illegal here, thank goodness, but you wouldn’t know from the way Romero and Russo and Kirkman portray the situation. Though in Kirkman’s case I think it might be influenced by the giant pile of money he gets to sleep on every night. As Upton Sinclair said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!”