Given that
this is Cambodia, given that I have already received one visit from the police
and given Pastor Mulheran’s thinly veiled threat to havd\e me ‘forcibly removed’,
I take very seriously the possibility that the police may knock on my door at
any time and charge me with whatever crime suits their purposes. In the event
that this occurs I want to place on record as much as possible of the history
of what has occurred here and has led to my arrest.
Continuing on
with Pastor Mulheran’s letter
Your personal interest for the documentary film
has continued to take precedence over the best interests of the girls and the
family. While we acknowledge that you have regularly contributed to the
financial support of the family, is this just another form of trafficking in
order to pay the family so that you can continue to film them for your personal
interest and the financial gain that you would receive from the profits of your
documentary?
I have already dealt with
the question of financial gain for myself and need not repeat myself. On the
question of financial gain, however, how much money does Citipointe make from
each of the ‘poverty tourists’ who have the opportunity to enrichen the lives
of girls like Rosa and Chita by lining them up and washing their hair? Given
that it costs around $3,000 for each of Citipointe’s ‘poverty tourists’ to hang
out with supposedly sexually abused girls who are victims of Human Trafficking
and given that the all up costs of the tour, including airfare, would not exceed
$2,000, my guess is that Citipointe is making a handsome $1,000 per head profit
from the ‘poverty tourism’ arm of the church’s enterprises. If I have got my
figures slightly wrong, please correct me. Oh, and whilst on the question of
figures, of the 25 girls resident right now at the She Rescue Home, how many
are victims of Human Trafficking? I know you won’t answer this question so let
me answer it for you. Four. Four girls out of 25. That’s 16% of the girls in
the She Rescue Home (and these are figures supplied by a Citipointe insider)
that have actually been, in some sense, ‘rescued’.
As for the question of
financial support, I was contributing to the family finances, when I could
afford to do so, for 13 or 14 years before Citipointe appeared on the scene. The
level of my financial support was limited by my own lack of financial
resources. Contrary to what you might think, documentary filmmakers are not
rich people by and large but what is significant here is that I am no
Johnny-come –lately when it comes to helping Chanti’s family. Citipionte, on
the other hand, has provided NO financial support for the rest of Chanti’s
family since Rosa and Chita became resident at the She Rescue Home. Let me
repeat this: NO financial support! As you know, there was one occasion a couple
of years ago when I arrived in Phnom Penh to find the family so poor, Chanti’s
other children so lacking in proper food, that their hair had turned red from
malnutrition – as is evidenced in the footage I shot. On another occasion (also
filmed) the family had no choice but to eat the corpse of a dog that had been
found at the side of the road. Were either of these two occasions ones when
Citipointe was just a few weeks away from reintegration?
Excuse me for belabouring
the point but it is important, given your repeated accusations that I am
‘interfering’ and delaying reintegration by helping the family. In close to
five years Citipointe has done nothing to care for the rest of the family. Nothing. When I arrived in Phnom Penh a
little over two weeks ago I came at very short notice because I received a
message from Chanti, via two intermediaries, that she was sick and that
Citipointe refused to help her. When I took her to the doctor, the day I
arrived in Phnom Penh, it transpired that she had pneumonia and that her fever,
if it continued, placed the life of her baby at risk. Is this one of the
occasions when Citipointe was just a few weeks away from reintegration? Or was
it yet another occasion when Citipointe revealed its total lack of care or
concern for Chanti’s welfare? And last year there was the tumour on her
wrist (filmed also) that cost me only
$60 to have removed because Citipointe would not foot the bill. Not only is the
church’s refusal to help Chanti an abrogation of the promises it made in 2008,
it also reveals a callousness and lack of caring that is decidedly
un-Christian.
You would be
horrified if anyone thought that of you, because in your mind you have the best
interests of the family and girls at heart and yet somehow in your mind you
continue to portray us in such a light as if we have and hold the girls in our
care on the Government’s behalf for some ulterior motive.
The men and women who
‘stole’ Aboriginal from their parents did not believe that they had an ulterior
motive. They were doing, in their minds, the right Christian thing. It would be
far preferable, they believed, that these children be brought up in
institutions where they would receive three meals a day, decent schooling and,
in many cases, an opportunity to meet the Lord Jesus Christ. That these good
people, their intentions undoubtedly pure, were profoundly misguided is now
accepted within mainstream Australian society.
For Citipointe (and other NGOs) to replicate the very worst aspects of
the ‘stolen generation’ and to be allowed to get away with it is a crime
against humanity. In another 10 or 20 all those who at present condone the
removal of poor children from their families (and this includes Chab Dai) will
,ook back in horror at what they have perpetrated – just as we in Australian
now look back in horror at the callous paternalism that led us to steal
Aboriginal children from their poor families. Having spoken with you on the phone,Brian, I have no doubt
that you are a good man and that you believe that it is in the best interests
of Rosa and Chita that they grow up in an institution and experience the joys
of having their hair washed by ‘poverty tourists’ but you are profoundly
misguided. Citipointe church is profoundly misguided. History will prove this,
just as history has proved the removal of Aboriginal children from their
families to be profoundly misguided.
We have no greater desire than to see the girls
reintegrated back with the family, however, this process, is being hindered by
your continued interference.
Brian, this last
statement is, as you know, a bald faced lie. In close to five years, half the
lives of Rosa and Chita, Citipointe has not even taken the most tentative of
steps towards re-integration. As for my ‘continued interference’, George Orwell
would shake his head and smile to hear you refer to my buying of a tuk tuk for
the family, my buying of a house (with a Christian friend, my paying the school
fees of James and Srey Ka, my buying of rice for the family as ‘interference’.
If only Citipointe had seen fit to ‘interfere’ a little over the past close to
five years. It has not. It has done nothing. NOTHING. Keeping the remainder of
Chanti’s family in an extreme form of poverty guarantees that Citipointe will
never have to relinquish its hold on Rosa and Chita; that the girls will help
keep those ‘poverty tourist’ and sponsorship dollars rolling in.
We ask that
you would do the following to ensure your compliance with Cambodian Law and for
the sake of the girls and the family and to assist in a speedier reintegration process.
‘Speedier’, Brian! You’ve
had close to five years and you haven’t even begun the reintegration process!
You remove all
content from the internet which reveals the identity and the stories of the
girls (we believe the law may also demand the removal of the identity and the
story of the mother as well, as she herself, was a child victim). (See specific
law below.)
Given that I am
publishing this on the internet I guess you’ll have guessed what my response is
to this Citipointe attempt at censorship. As for the notion that the Ministry
might also insist that an adult victim is not allowed to talk in pubic about her experiences, this
would be a very interesting can of worms for the Ministry given that whole
books and documentaries have been made by and about such victims. For the
record, however, let it be known that Chanti was never a victim of any for of
Human Trafficking.
You remove all content from the internet which
reveals the location of the Home and all defamatory material relating to
Citipointe Church and the SHE Rescue Home.
I have never revealed the
location of the She Rescue Home (I have no idea where it is) so I am at a loss
to know why you keep banging on about this. As for the so-called ‘defamatory
material’ I am quite prepared to stand by any and all of it in a court of law
so please instruct your lawyers as you wish.
You either
cease all aspects of production of the documentary film or remove all content
which would identify the mother and the girls who are or were all child
victims. The need to conceal the identities of all child victims is clearly
evident within the laws. (outlined below)
Brian, you excel yourself
here with your demand that I either give up 18 years of work on my documentary
or remove from it the central character – Chanti. Not that it matters,but what
evidence do you have that Chanti was ever a ‘child victim’ (of Human
Trafficking, I presume) and, as we all know, Rosa and Chita have never been
victims of any form of Human Trafficking. In the Alice in Wonderland world that
is the Cambodian legal system Rosa and Chita can be ‘deemed’ to be aliens from
outer space as far as MOSAVT is concerned but that doesn’t mean that they are.
Let me finish this installment by restating the fact that Rosa and Chita are
not and never have been victims of Human
Trafficking.
…to be
continued…
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