I received no response to my email to Pastor
Halloran so traveled to Cambodia to visit C, who was now living on a boat moored
at the edge of the river and making a meager living selling cold drinks and
snacks. Citipointe had not made contact with C to arrange for her to spend any
part of the Water Festival with her children.
Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2008 01:44:46 +0000
Dear Citipointe
I was delighted yesterday to be met with a
happy smiling C clutching $25 she had just earnt renting out the boat she has
sublet and on which she, her husband, mother and baby now live. C also has a
small stall – selling water, beer, cigarettes, snacks and large grape fruit.
Judging from what I saw yesterday her business is doing well.
Who knows where her boat renting business and
small stall will lead C. If she works hard she may well do well. She is
certainly smart enough to do so. The question now is whether or not she has the
discipline to stick with what she is doing. If, in two years time, C has
established herself as a modestly successful small businesswoman she may well
be in a position to take care of R and SM in a way that does not expose them to
the dangers of the street. If this be the case it would be most unfortunate if
(a) C had essentially signed her kids away to Citipointe until they are 18 or
(b) Citipointe has alienated R and SM from their mother and grandmother through
religious indoctrination and/or by allowing mother, grandmother and children
only 2 hours of supervised access to each other each month. Such a visitation
schedule amounts to 24 hours of supervised access each year or one full day per
annum. This is, in my estimation, an abrogation of the human rights of C, V, R
and SM. I will go further. I believe it to be a form of child abuse. Citipointe
could not get away with such a visitation regime in Australia and, leaving the
legal question aside, should not even consider such a regime for moral reasons.
R and SM are C’s children. They do not belong
to Citipointe. Citipointe is merely providing what will hopefully be only an
interim solution to the family’s problems. Foremost in Citipointe’s thinking
should be, “How can we best serve this little family such that they can all
live together again in the not too distant future?” What is the logic that
informs Citipointe’s insistence that mother, grandmother and children should
get to see each other only once a month? And what is the purpose of these
visits being supervised? Attributing this policy to LICADHO or Chab Dai is not
an answer to the question. I want to know why Citipointe has put in place such
policies?
Yesterday, along with thousands of others, I
stood at the side of the road and watched a procession of floats pass the Royal
Palace – the first of a series of events which are of great cultural
significance to Cambodians in the lead up to the Water Festival. Over the past
few years I have done so with R, SM, C and V at my side. I trust that during
the Water Festival itself C, R, SM, V and I will be able to enjoy the festive
atmosphere together – without the presence of Citipointe staff. If this means
abrogating Citipointe’s agreement with Chab Dai, so be it. Chab Dai has no
right to be dictating to fellow NGOs how they should behave – especially if
this involves forcing Citipointe to abrogate the agreement it entered into with
C before she agreed to allow Citipointe to foster her children.
best wishes
James Ricketson
On the day of my arrival n Phnom Penh C’s
husband called Citipointe to request that R and SM be allowed to spend time
with their family during the festival. His request was ignored.
Dear Citipointe
With the passage of four days you have not
had the courtesy to either acknowledge or respond to my recent emails regarding
R, SM and their mother C. With the passage of four days you have not had the
courtesy to respond to the phone call C’s husband made to the SHE office in
Phnom Penh two days before the Water Festival began – to ask if R and SM could
spend time with them during the Water Festival. You have not allowed C the
right to spend any part of the Water festival with R and SM; nor the right of
the children to spend any time with their mother during this significant
Cambodian festival. In so doing you have breached the agreement you entered
into with C five months ago. In doing so you have acted in a way that is
contrary to the assurances that Leigh, Helen and Rebecca gave me when we met in
Phnom Penh. Citipointe’s actions would be illegal in Australia and should not
be allowed in Cambodia. The culture of impunity, it seems, is alive and well
not only amongst wealthy and powerful Cambodians but amongst wealthy and
powerful NGOs such as Citipointe also.
In Australia my role in the lives of R and SM
would be akin to that played by a Godparent, uncle or grandfather. You have
denied me meaningful access to these girls also during this festive time and
have provided me with no reason for doing so.
In order to provide some cover for it’s
actions, Citipointe has assured me on five occasions (three in emails and twice
on the telephone) that it went back on its promises made to C (and myself) at
the insistence of both LICADHO and Chab Dai. At least as far as LICADHO is
concerned, this was a lie – a lie not told once but five times. I am copying
this email to Chab Dai so that it can have an opportunity to either deny or
confirm that it has played a role in ‘forcing’ Citipointe to abrogate the
promises it made to C.
Men and women in Cambodia (with power and
money) who induce impoverished parents to give up their sons and daughters with
either false promises or money and who then exploit these children are quite
rightly thought of as criminals. Human rights organizations in Cambodia (of
which LICAHDO is one of many) quite rightly do all they can to prevent this
exploitation of children from occurring and punishing those who engage in such
activity. Citipointe has induced C to foster her daughters R and SM to Citipointe
under what have turned out to be false promises – namely that mother and
daughters would have free and regular access to each other. Taking the law into
its own hands, and stating that it is acting in accordance with directives from
LICADHO and Chab Dai, Citipointe has reduced C’s free access to her children to
what amounts to one full day a year. I will point out again, because this is a
very serious point, Citipointe’s actions here would be ILLEGAL in Australia.
Citipointe knows this to be the case. However, lets just say it was legal in
Australia for foster carers to limit access of children to their parents to one
day a year, would it be right? Is this Christianity in practice? If
circumstances left any of the readers of this email little choice but to foster
their children temporarily, how would each of you individually feel if the
foster carers then told you that you could see your children for only 24 hours
a year and even these hours would be supervised by the foster carers?
Citipointe is both deceiving parents who
foster their children to the SHE program and those who contribute financially
to the SHE programme.
For an organization which should, in theory,
have clear policies in place, the answers to my many questions should be very
easy to provide. If Citipointe has any commitment at all to the concepts of
accountability and transparency it will respond appropriately to my emails, in
writing, by the end of the day. If LICADHO is likewise committed to the
concepts of accountability and transparency (which I know to be the case) it
will urge Citipointe, in its meeting today, to answer my questions immediately.
In addition to my request that Citipointe
answer the various questions I have put to it in my emails I would also like to
extend to Citipointe an invitation for a representative of the church to be
interviewed for my documentary about C and her family which, as you know, I
have been filming for 14 years. I will provide Citipointe with a complete
unedited version of the interview so that Citipointe can, if I edit the
interview in a way that misrepresents Citipointe’s position vis a vis SHE in
general and R, SM and C in particular, sue me for defamation or take whatever
steps necessary to have its reputation restored.
I will take this opportunity, since this
email is being copied to both LICADHO and Chab Dai, to extend the same
invitation to these two organizations also and under the same conditions.
best wishes
James Ricketson
Dear Naly Pilorge
This afternoon Citipointe and LICADHO will
meet to discuss the matters I have raised in my emails relating to C and her
children. Despite C’s being a 21 year old adult she has not been invited to
attend by either Citipointe or LICADHO. Citipointe will no doubt make its case
for the alienation of R and SM from their family and culture – though it will
do so in terms which make it seem that it is, in some sense, ‘rescuing’ these
kids. Citipointe can, it seems, if it so wishes, do what it wants and no one
will stop it - certainly not Chab Dai. C’s well being will not be a factor in
Citipointe’s decision-making – as evidenced by the fact that it has not, at any
point in this past week, sought to discuss the matters raised in my email with
C. Perhaps when I have left Phnom Penh and C has no one to act as an advocate
for her, Citipointe will find time to go down to the river and speak with her.
C, like many Cambodians, is accustomed to
being exploited. Like most Cambodians she all too readily accepts such
exploitation as her fate. She wishes the best for her children (whom she loves
dearly) and will be very easy to intimidate if she fears that asking for her
rights as a mother to be acknowledged may lead to Citipointe not returning R
and SM to her. C is well aware that she needs help if she is to break the cycle
of poverty that she has been caught up in throughout her life. The operative
word here is ‘help’ and help on her terms; not what Citipointe considers, in
its Christian zeal, to be help – namely ‘stealing’ her children from her. I use
the word ‘stealing’ as it has been used, colloquially, in Australia, to
describe Aboriginal children removed from their families at ages similar to
those of R and SM and, all too often, given to Christians to bring up. This
has, in Australia, given rise to monstrous social and familial wounds that will
take generations to heal.
Will the international NGO community in
Cambodia, including Chab Dai, simply stand by, mute, and allow this to occur?
I trust that LICADHO and the international
community of NGOs will place appropriate pressure on Citipointe to present C
with a proper contract – one which is in keeping with the spirit of the
Church’s original discussions with C. The terms of the new contract should give
C the right to regular meetings with her children without supervision – unless
Citipointe can produce cogent evidence that such unsupervised access poses some
kind of risk to R and SM. It should be clear in the contract that Citipointe’s
primary objective is, at the appropriate time, to return R and SM to C’s care.
If Citipointe insists on the use of the phrase ‘safe environment’ it must
define what this is.
As for myself, I have been the only
consistent adult male figure in C’s life. Her reference to me as ‘Papa’ means
much more to her and to me than the way in which the expression is used
colloquially. At one point, couple of years ago, C asked me if I would adopt R
and take her to Australia so that she could acquire a decent education. I did
not pursue this request for a variety of reasons but significant amongst them
was my feeling that R belongs with her family, with her community, in the
country of her birth.
If any of the facts that I have referred to
in my emails are incorrect I invite you and other recipients of my emails to
correct my mistakes. If you feel that I have drawn the wrong conclusions from
the facts available to me, please le me know. The same applies to Citipointe,
Chab Dai and other readers of my emails. If I have inadvertently failed to
place the work being done by NGOs with disadvantaged children in a culturally
appropriate context please bring this to my attention. If there is any other
observation you would like to make (along with other readers) that is relevant
to the matters being raised here, I can assure you that I will include them
(insofar as time and space make possible) in any film I make or article I
write.
best wishes
James Ricketson
...to be
continued...
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