Naly Pilorge
Cambodian League for the Promotion and
Defense of Human Rights (LICADHO)
#16, St. 99, Boeung
Trabek, Phnom Penh, Cambodia
7th March 2013
7th March 2013
Dear Naly
In Nov 2008 I
wrote several letters to you regarding the case of Yem Chanthy’s daughters Rosa
and Srey Mal (aka Chita) who had a few months earlier been removed from the
care of their family by Citipointe church. What has begun as a handshake
agreement between Citipointe and Yem Chanthy became more formalized on 31st
July when Citipointe asked Chanti (as I know her) to place her thumb print on a
‘contract’ between herself and the church. At the time of applying her thumb
print to the document Chanti was led to believe that the person who had
presented it to her was a representative of LICADHO. Knowing LICADHO to be
committed to the advocaty of human rights, Chanti trusted the women she
believed to be from LICADHO. To this day, more than four years later, Chanti
still believes that the ‘contract’ she signed was with LICADHO. In my interviews with her LICADHO and
Citipointe are interchangeable – the same organization as far as she is
concerned. Why, one wonders, has Citipointe never once, this past close to five
years, sought to correct this misunderstanding of Chanti’s?
It transpired
that the ‘contract’ Chanti had signed was worthless. It was factually incorrect
in terms of Chanti’s age and the status of her living arrangements. She was at
the time living in a small room in a house close to the river – as footage from
my documentary attests. She was not living on the street at the time that Rosa
and Chita went to stay with the She Rescue Home or on 31st July when
she ‘signed’ the contract presented to her by ‘LICADHO’.
The 31st
July ‘contract’ is not countersigned by any member of Citipointe church and
contains none of the terms and conditions that Rebecca Brewer subsequently told
both Chanti and myself that it contained – most specifically that Rosa and
Chita (Srey Mal) would not be returned to the care of their family until they
were 18 years old. Or until the family cold provide them with a ‘safe
environment’. Leaving aside the fact that there have been many occasion this
past close to five years when Chanti and her husband Chhork could provide a
‘safe environment’ to Rosa and Chita, in March 2013 Chhork earns his living as
a tuk tuk driver, Chanti and her mother sell books, scarves and other items to
tourists and the family owns a home in Srey Veng – in the village in which
Chhork’s extended family lives. Twenty minutes up the road is another extended
family – that of Chanti’s mother, Vanna.
The important
point here, however, the one relevant to LICADHO, is that in 2008 Citipointe
church led both Chanti and myself to believe that the forced removal of Rosa
and Chita from her care, the decision to keep the girls until they were 18 and
to limit supervised visits to 2 hours per month, had been done with be blessing
of LICADHO and in accordance with protocols laid down by Chab Dia.
I have now
pretty much finished filming CHANTI’S WORLD – an 18 year record of Chanti’s
life and that of her family and other poor people that make up her world. It is
imperative that the film be factually correct and it is for this reason that I
am writing you this letter – which contains one specific question:
Is
Chanti correct in maintaining that LICADHO was in some way involved in the
drawing up or signing of the July 31st ‘contract’ that Citipointe
used as its initial justification for holding Rosa and Chita against the wishes
of their parents?
If I do not
receive an answer to this question I will have said, in the voice over for
CHANTI’S WORLD, “Licadho declined to comment on Chanti’s claim that 31st July 2008 contract had been
written up and presented to her by Licadho.’
On a slightly
different but related topic, another question:
Does
LICADHO believe it appropriate that Citipointe church conducts ‘poverty tours’
that include the She Rescue Home in their itinerary?
Surely, if the
girls in the She Rescue Home are victims of Human Trafficking, turning them
into tourists attractions is not just culturally inappropriate but reveals a
lack of sensitivity to and understanding of the trauma these girls must be
suffering as a result of their horrendous experiences. To line them up in a row
so that cashed-up tourists can wash their hair in unison strikes me as being
the kind of human rights abuse that LICADHO exists to expose.
To refresh you
memory (it is a long time ago now!), I quote here in full one of my letters to
you from Nov 2008:
Dear Naly Pilorge
This afternoon Citipointe and LICADHO will
meet to discuss the matters I have raised in my emails relating to Chanti and
her children. Despite Chanti’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 Rosa and Srey Mal 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. Chanti’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 Chanti. Perhaps when I have left Phnom Penh and
Chanti has no one to act as an advocate for her, Citipointe will find time to
go down to the river and speak with her.
Chanti, 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 Rosa
and Srey Mal to her. Chanti 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 Rosa and Srey Mal 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
Chanti with a proper contract – one which is in keeping with the spirit of the
Church’s original discussions with Chanti. The terms of the new contract should
give Chanti 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 Rosa and Srey Mal. It should be clear in the
contract that Citipointe’s primary objective is, at the appropriate time, to
return Rosa and Srey Mal to Chanti’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 Chanti’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, Chanti asked me if I would adopt Rosa 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 Rosa 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
I would like to
extend to you, again, an invitation to be interviewed in relation to both the
concept of ‘poverty tourism’ or ‘orphanage tourism’ (“Does LICADHO approve or disapprove of the
practice?”) and to the question of whether of not LICADHO played any
role at all in the drawing up or presentation to Chanti of the ‘contract’ that
resulted in the removal of Chanti’s daughters from her care close to five years
ago.
best wishes
James Ricketson
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