for Naly Pilorge and Helen Sworn + complaint to the Australian Federal Police

Dear Naly and Helen

Given that the facts surrounding what I allege to be Citipointe's illegal removal of Rosa and Chita from the care of their family in 2008 are of no interest to either of you or the organisations you represent, I have asked the Australian Federal Police to investigate; to get answers to the very questions that both Chab Dai and LICADHO could have asked close to five years ago.  Whether the AFP will take any interest in this matter remains to be seen.

The removal of two children from the care of their parents in Cambodia in 2008

FACTS

- In June 2008 a poor Cambodian woman in her early 20s by the name of Yem Chanthy had a conversation with a representative of Citipointe church, based in Brisbane, Pastor Leigh Ramsay. Pastor Ramsay asked Yem Chanthy if she would like some help from the church to tide her over family over whilst in the midst of a financial crisis – brought on, in part, by the birth of her third daughter.

Yem Chanthy was, at the time, living in a one bedroom apartment  in Phnom Penh with her husband Both Chhork, her two daughters – Rosa (aged 6), Chita (aged 5) and her new baby Srey Ka. Both Chhork is step-father to Rosa and the biological father of Chita (also known as Srey Mal).  The family’s poverty was such that after the birth of Srey Ka Yem Chanty was begging on the streets of Phnom Penh.

- In June 2008 Yem Chanthy and Both Chhork spoke with James Ricketson about the offer that had been made by Citipointe church. Yem Chanthy had known James Ricketson, a filmmaker, since 1995, when he commenced making a documentary record of her life. James Ricketson also spoke twice with representatives of Citipointe about the church’s offer of assistance.   

- On 31^st July 2008, Yem Chanthy and her mother, Chab Vanna, were asked by a representative of Citipointe church to place their thumb prints on a document. Yem Chanthy and Chab Vanna, both of them illiterate, were told that this document would give the church permission to take care of Rosa and Chita until Yem Chanthy and Both Chhork’s financial situation improved sufficiently such that the the girls could be reunited with their family. Both Chhork was not asked to sign this document.

- Please find attached a colour photocopy of this 31^st, July 2008 document and, on a separate page, an English translation of it. Please note that it is not countersigned by any member of Citipointe church.

- A witness to the signing of this 31^st July 2008 document identified herself as working for LICADHO (a human rights organization) but did not provide a witness signiature. (Since Nov 2008 LICADHO has refused to either confirm or deny that a representative of LICADHO was present for the signing of this document. To this day, Yem Chanty believes that the agreement she had entered into on 31^st July was with LICADHO. As a result of having lived most of her life on the streets of Phnom Penh Yem Chanthy was familiar with the human rights work done by LICADHO and trusted the person presented to her as a LICADHO employee.)

- On 11^th August 2008 Rebecca Brewer, a representative of Citipoine church wrote, in an email to James Ricketson, that Rosa and Chita would reside at the She Rescue Home until they were 18 years old. The precise words used by Rebecca Brewer were: (“Rosa and Chita stay with us until they are 18 or until she can provide a safe environment for them, as defined by LICADHO and the Ministry of Social Affairs.”

- Several written requests made by James Ricketson to Citipointe, LICADHO and the Ministry of Social Affairs to be provided with these ‘definitions’ were ignored. (Four and a half years later it is still impossible to obtain from Citipointe, LICADHO or the Ministry of Social Affairs a ‘definition’ of a ‘safe environment’.)

- Between August 2008 and November 2008 Yem Chanthy and her husband, Both Chhork,  requested on several occasions that their daughters be returned to their family – their financial fortunes having turned around with the acquisition of a food stall. Citipointe refused to either return Rosa and Chita or to allow them to join the rest of the family at the annual Water Festival – citing the 31^st July 2008 document as evidence that Yem Chanthy had entered into a contractual agreement that gave the church the right to remain as legal guardians of Rosa and Chita until they were 18 years old.

- In November 2008 James Ricketson had the 31^st July 2008 ‘contract’ translated from Khmer into English. It was discovered that the document contained no reference to Citipointe retaining custody of Rosa and Chita until they were 18 years old. It was discovered also that the ‘contract’ did not contain any reference to the visitation rights of Yem Chanty and Both Chhok to their daughters – despite Citipointe church having claimed, in writing, that it did. In a telephone conversation Pastor Brian Mulheran told James Ricketson that Citipointe church was “obliged to abide by its membership with Chab Dai and its contractual relationship with LICADHO to restrict Chanti’s and Vanna’s access to Rosa and Srey Mal to two hours of supervised visit every two week and now, owing to the recent incident,  to two hours every month.”

- The ‘recent incident’ was Yem Chanthy ‘kidnapping’ Rosa from the She Rescue Home when she and Both Chhork realized that Citipointe church had no intention of abiding by the terms of the verbal agreement they (along with James Ricketson) had entered into with the church. (There is abundant evidence in support of the proposition that Yem Chanthy, Both Chhork and James Ricketson were mislead by Citipointe in relation to the church’s offer to assist the family on a short term basis.)

- It was discovered also that the 31^st July 2008 ‘contract’ had not been signed by any representative of Citipointe church.  Cambodian and Australian lawyers have expressed the opinion, in very forceful terms, that the 31^st July 2008 document did not constitute a legally binding contract between Yem Chanthy and Citipointe giving the church any of the rights it claimed to both Yem Chanthy and James Ricketson that it did – namely that Rosa and Chita would remain in the legal custody of Citipointe until they were 18 years old, that Yem Chanthy’s visits to her daughters would be limited to 2 hours per month and that such visits would be supervised by a member of Citipointe church.

Fifteen months later the Ministry of Social Affairs provided the following explanation as to why Citipointe had not entered into a contractual agreement with the ministry until late 2009:

1)       For the SHE Rescue project, bring the children under the control and protection before signing the agreement was possible because the organization was already registered with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation already. 

2)       For the SHE resuce project, according to the agreement made with the Ministry of Social Affairs, Veterans and Youth Rehabilitation, the organization has projected to help victims of human trafficking and sex trade as well as families which fall so deep in poverty. After questioning directly, the ministry believes that Rosa must have been in any of the above categories.

The ‘must have been’ in italics (my own) suggests that no-one from MOSAVY actually checked to see which category Rosa fell into but took Citipointe’s word for it, since Citipointe has recently taken to referring to Rosa and Chita as ‘victims of Human Trafficking’. (James Ricketson was filming at the time that Rosa and Chita were recruited, along with the daughters of other poor families, and can provide audio-visual evidence that Rosa and Chita were not and never have been ‘victims of Human Trafficking.’)

- Between 31^st July 2008 and November 2008 (and for the following 15 months) Citipointe church had, by its own admission, entered into no form of agreement with the Cambodian Ministry of Social Affairs regarding the church’s continued custody of Rosa and Chita. During this 15 months Citipointe repeatedly refused to return Yem Chanthy and Both Chhork’s daughters to them.

- It is James Ricketson’s allegation that the 31^st. July 2008 document signed by Yem Chanthy and Chab Vanna not constitute a legally binding contract giving Citipointe church the right to retain custody of Rosa and Chita contrary to the express wishes of their parents Yem Chanthy and Both Chhork. In the absence of any other contract or agreement with the relevant Cambodian government department (the Ministries of Foreign and Asocial Affairs) it is James Ricketson’s allegation that during this fifteen month period, Citipointe was guilty of breaching Cambodia’s “Law on Suppression of Human Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation” – the relevant part of which reads:

Article 8:Definition of Unlawful Removal

The act of unlawful removal in this act shall mean to:

1)      Remove a person from his/her current place of residence to a place under the actor’s or a third persons control by means of force, threat, deception, abuse of power or enticement, or

2)      Without legal authority or any other legal justification to do so to take a minor person under general custody or curatoship or legal custody away from the legal custody of the parents, care taker or guardian.

Article 9: Unlawful removal, inter alia, of Minor

A person who unlawfully removes a minor or a person under general custody or curatorship or legal custody shall be punished with imprisonment for 2 to 5 years.

- James Ricketson has attempted, on many occasions this past four and a half years, to get both Citiopointe church and the Ministry of Social Affairs to provide Yem Chanthy with copies of any and all contracts or agreements relating to Citipointe’s continuing custody of Rosa and Chita.  These contracts or agreements are important for two reasons: (1) to demonstrate to Yem Chanthy and Both Chhork that Citipointe that they either did or did not have a legal right, between 31^st July and November 2008 to retain custody of their daughters and (2) to discover what they need to do in April 2013 to demonstrate to the Ministry of Social Affairs what constitutes a ‘safe environment,’  such that their daughtyers can be returned to them. (In April 2013, Both Chhork and Yem Chanthy own their own home in a village in the province of Prey Veng and Both Chhork earns a regular income driving a tuk tuk. Despite the obvious ‘safety’ of the ‘home environment’ and ability of Both Chhork and Yem Chanthy to support their family, Citipointe refuses to return Rosa and Chita to the care of their family.)

- James Ricketson’s allegations regarding the legality of Citipointes actions in 2008 in removing Rosa and Chita from their parents care are just that – allegations. The only way that these allegations can be tested is for Citipointe church to provide Yem Chanthy and myself (as her advocate) with copies of the contracts and agreements that the church claims to have with the Ministries of Foreign and Social Affairs. This the church refuses to do.

In order to resolve this matter James Ricketson requests of the Australian Federal Police that it conduct an investigation into whether or not Citipointe’s removal of Yem Chanthy and Both Chhork’s daughters in 2008 was or was not a breach of section 270 and 271 of the Australian Criminal Code Act of 1995 .

Amongst the breaches of this 1995 Act that Citipointe may be guilty of is paying Chanti 25 cents, this past few years, for the manufacturing of a product (wristbands) that the church sells for $3 at times when hers and Chhork’s other children were suffering from malnutrition as a result of their poverty.  There is ample audio-visual evidence of this, as there is for the bulk of facts presented here.

James Ricketson

for Chab Dai and LICADHO on transparency, accountability, honesty and the need for an independent monitoring body to weed bad NGOs out of the NGO community.

Dear Helen Sworn  and Naly Pilorge

Your capacity to remain silent, to refuse to answer any questions at all, comes as no surprise to me after all these years. How dare anyone have the temerity to ask questions of either Chab Dai or LICADHO and expect answers. This is not the way not works. You are accountable to no-one and do not practice the very transparency that you expect of the Cambodian government. If a powerful Cambodian (in either government or business) threatened to have an expatriate NGO ‘forcibly removed’, threated to have him or her arrested, jailed and banned from coming to Cambodia again, would this not give rise to a public statement, at least, deploring such behavior? Or are NGOs (particularly Christian NGOs) exempt from criticism for such thuggish behaviour? Why can’t Chab Dai take, at the very least, a moral stance in public on such behavior? Is there any moral principle that Chab Dai will stand up for or is its support of fellow Christians unconditional?

Given that I have broken no Cambodian laws I have to presume that Pastor Mulheran believes he has the power and influence necessary to request of the police that I be ‘forcibly removed.’ Not really the sort of behavior one would expect of a Christian, I would have thought, Helen, but as you know Christians come in all shapes and sizes and not all of them are as they appear to be or as they present themselves to be to the public. But you and Chab Dai will stand by them through thick and thin.

As I have written before, such a thinly veiled threat is almost certainly the bluff and bluster of a bully but, as you both know, having me ‘forcibly removed’ (such a delightful euphemism!) would be easy for anyone in Cambodia with pockets deep enough to make it happen.  Radio personalities, politicians, home and land owners are ‘forcibly removed’ on a regular basis in Cambodia!

Rather than a Mafia style forcible removal I suspect it may be that Citipointe intends to have me ‘forcibly removed’ by suing me for defamation in Cambodia for having accused the church of having ‘stolen’ Chanti and Chhork’s daughters, Rosa and Chita, in 2008? This threat has been made or intimated a few times this past few years. Citipointe would not consider suing me in Australia, of course, because in Australia a court would arrive at a verdict based on facts, on evidence and the church knows that I have a mass of evidence pointing to Citipointe having ‘stolen’ Rosa and Chita in much the same way in which Aboriginal children were ‘stolen’ from their materially poor parents in Australia last century – a now thoroughly discredited form or social engineering for which we have, as a nation, made a formal apology. And if Citipointe had not entered into a legally biding contract with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in August 2008, giving the church the right to detain Rosa and Chita contrary to the express wishes of Chanti and Chhork, Citipointe broke Cambodian law by essentially kidnapping the girls.

The publicity surrounding a defamation case in Australia would throw onto Citippointe precisely the sort of spotlight that the church does not want – preferring, as it does, to cloak its activities in secrets and lies. Questions would be asked along the lines of those I have been asking for close to five years and which are to be found, in their abundance, on my blog - questions that Citipointe simply refuses to answer and which neither Chab Dai nor LICADHO feels that it is even important to ask. Questions like: “Was your removal of Rosa and Chita from their parents care in mid 2008 in accordance with Cambodian law?” Do you not ask such a question because you know the answer and the answer would reflect badly on both your organization for having said or done nothing to protect the human rights of Chanti, Chhork, Rosa and Chita this past close to five years?

A court case in Australia would lead to questions of the kind I ask being publicly aired; to Citipointe being forced to be transparent and accountable for its actions; to provide the court (and hence my defense team) with copies of the legal agreements the church claims to have with the Cambodian Ministries of Foreign and Social Affairs; with the agreements the church claims to have entered into with Chab Dai and LICADHO giving Citipointe the right to deny parents and children in the care of the She Rescue Home the right to maintain meaningful contact with each other. I have asked this question countless times but will try again:

Is Citipointe’s account of the involvement of Chab Dai and LICADHO in the removal of Rosa and Chita from their parent’s care in mid 2008 a true and accurate one or is the church lying?

Scrutiny of the kind that a court case would involve in Australia is the last thing Citipointe would want. If the church were to sue me in Cambodia, however, the facts, the truth, contracts and agreements would be of secondary (or no) importance – as a wealth of ‘defamation’ cases in that country bear witness. It is possible, in Cambodia, as you would be well aware, to be found guilty of defamation for simply questioning the wisdom of hanging lights off Angkor Wat so that tourists can visit the temple at night. The Cambodian judiciary’s definition of defamation is very flexible indeed!

The problem with Citipointe, Hagar and Love In Action (and a whole host of others) is that there is no mechanism whereby such NGOs can be held accountable for what they do or fail to do. Any and all NGOs can write whatever they like on their websites about family re-integration, helping families become self-sustaining, capacity building etc and there is no body, no organization, that will ever look at what they do and determine whether of not the NGO is achieving its goals or even if it is trying to achieve its stated goals. An NGO is able to run for years illegally, flying a Christian flag (in the case of Love In Action) with no questions asked. Or, in the case of Citipointe, pay poor parents such as Chanti 25 cents to manufacture a wrist band that the church sells for $3 – blatant exploitation – with no questions being asked by anyone. And Hagar can, allegedly, limit visits between parents and children to 2 hours per annum with no questions being asked. It is encouraging that the Ministry of Social Affairs is now starting to ask such questions but why haven’t Chab Dai and LICADHO been asking any of these questions this past five years?

Clearly, in amongst all the good and effective NGOs there are some that are badly run, badly conceived and which have an agenda other than the one that they declare on their website to their donors and sponsors. It is in the interests of all NGOs that these bad NGOs be weeded out of the system. Otherwise, all NGOs become tainted by the reputation of the bad NGOs.

One way of weeding out ‘bad NGOs’ would be for all NGOs in Cambodia to contribute a small amount each year to fund an independent monitoring body that is totally open and transparent and not beholden to any one NGO. Such an independent monitoring body could do spot checks on NGOs, conduct surveys, talk to ‘clients’ to determine how effective or otherwise NGOs are in meeting their stated goals. This could be the NGO equivalent of random breath testing. In the case of Hagar, for instance, this independent monitoring body could ask a representative sample of Hagar ‘clients’ how often they got to see their families and whether or not ‘clients’ were forced to attend Citipointe church services. In the case of Citipointe the Independent monitoring body might ask that the church make known to it the legal basis on which it took control of the lives of Rosa and Chita in mid 2008. And so on.

It could be, from one year to the next (as with random breath testing) that an NGO is not assessed at all but, as with random breath testing, an NGO would be wary of making claims that could not be substantiated by the independent monitoring body – especially if the NGO knew that all of its fellow NGOs were going to find out about it. Given the sheer number of NGOs in Cambodia, the financial contribution of every NGO that signs up would be minimal. There need be no obligation on the part of NGOs to sign up but in not doing so the NGO would be making it publicly known that it was not committed to the precepts of transparency and accountability – a useful piece of information for others who have dealings in one way or another with the NGO.

An independent monitoring body would have no legal clout at all but would serve as a moral beacon only – pointing out to all those NGOs that have signed up, that such and such an NGO will not answer certain questions or that there is a credibility gap between what the NGO says in public and what it does in private.

In the event that an NGO does come in for criticism by the independent monitoring body, the NGO in question should have the right of reply in the same issue of the newsletter that is sent out to all the other NGOs. So, for example, if the independent monitoring body finds that an NGO is employing poor Cambodians to manufacture a product for 25 cents that it then sells online for $3, the NGO would have the right to defend its actions or deny the truth of them. In the event that the NGO refused to do so, the other NGOs in the consortium would be free to draw their own conclusions. What I am suggesting is, of course,  only that NGOs be given some encouragement (at the risk of being publicly shamed) to be transparent, accountable and honest. Art present, as far as I can sew, there is no requirement on any NGO to be transparent, accountable or honest – unless they wish, as a matter of principle, to be so.

I stress again that such an independent monitoring body should not have any powers at all other than those that accrue to being publicly shamed for saying one thing and doing another. Without such a body it is highly likely that a few rotten apples in the NGO barrel will besmirch the reputation and credibility of all NGOs.

for Naly Pilorge (LICADHO) and Helen Sworn (Chab Dai), yet more correspondence and questions for both to ignore!

Dear Helen and Naly

Your refusal to acknowledge receipt of my correspondence, let alone respond to it,  answer questions, makes it abundantly clear where you both stand on questions relating to transparency and accountability. You expect transparency and accountability from the Cambodian government, adopting in public the high moral ground, but when it comes to Chab Dai and LICAHDO and the relationship of both organizations with NGOs, such precepts go out the window. NGOs are free to engage in human rights abuses and neither Chab Dai nor LICADHO will say or do anything to prevent these from occurring. Your silence, your turning a blind eye, has made it possible for NGOs running illegal ‘orphanages’ to do so for years – with the very same kind of impunity that your organizations criticize the Cambodian government for!

It is a wonderful step forward that the Cambodian government has finally stepped in to do something about sham orphanages and, hopefully, other NGOs that are equally guilty of feeding off, exploiting, poor Cambodians  all the while presenting themselves to the world as engaged in ‘alleviating poverty’, ‘capacity building’ and other such fine and noble sentiments to be found on their websites.

Through an intermediary the Cambodian police have made it known that they wish to talk with me about my ‘version’ of the events that led to Citipointe church removing Rosa and Chita from the care of their parents, Chanti and Chhork in June 2008. I do not know the names of the police who wish to speak with me or which branch of the police force they work for. Nor have the police themselves made direct contact with me with a formal request that I speak with them. They have done so only through an intermediary.

It is difficult not to view this request by anonymous police to interview me in the context of Pastor Brian Mulheran’s thinly veiled threats to have me ‘forcibly removed’.

“We sincerely do not want to  have to go down a legal pathway of seeing you forcibly removed…”

I do not take Pastor Mulheran’s ‘sincere’ desire not to have me ‘forcibly removed’ too seriously. I suspect (though I can’t be 100% sure) that it is the bluff and bluster of a bully intent on intimidating me into stopping asking, in a public forum, (my blog) the sorts of questions that I believe it would have been appropriate for LICADHO and Chab Dai to have asked close to five years ago. Questions like:

“Do you, Pastors Leigh Ramsay and Brian Mulheran, have a legal right (in mid  2008) to remove Rosa and Chita  from the care of their parents, Chanti and Chhork?”

LICADHO and Chab Dai could also have asked a question or two of  Ruth Golder, whose illegally run Love In Action orphanage, “with links to the Christian Outreach Centre in Australia, ha(s) operated illegally for years with Australian donations.”:

“Is your orphanage properly registered and are you operating it in accordance with Cambodian law?”

LICADHO and Chab Dai not ask such basic questions, however,  preferring to turn a blind eye to what appear, from all reports, to be blatant human rights abuses.  If either LICADHO or Chab Dai had bothered to ask Ruth Golder questions a few years ago about the legality of her actions the children in her care might have been spared the human rights abuses that she is allegedly guilty of. The same applies for Hagar. Would it be too much for LICADHO and Chab Dai to ask Hagar if the NGO limits visits between parents and children to two hours a year? To ask if it is true that Hagar ‘clients’ (as they are known) have no choice but to attend Citipointe church services? Is it appropriate that Hagar forcibly converts of Cambodian Buddhists into Christians in the Citipointe mold? Is it appropriate that parents and children have their visitation rights limited to two hours per annum? Or do both LICADHO and Chab Dai believe that Buddhist Cambodian children are better off being alienated from their families, their religion and their culture? This is not a rhetorical question, though I feel sure that neither of you will answer it.

Given LICADHO’s and Chab Dai’s failure to ask any questions at all of Citipointe church in relation not just to Rosa and Chita but to other girls in the church’s care (84% or which are NOT ‘victims of Human Trafficking’) and given that the Ministry of Social Affairs has likewise refused, for close to five years, to ask questions, and given the distress Chanti and Chhork experience on a daily basis as a result of their daughter being, essentially, ‘stolen’ fromt hem by Citipointe, I have asked the Australian Federal police to investigate this matter. Below is the cover letter I have sent to the Australian Federal Police. It should not have been necessary for me to make my formal request for an investigation. If LICADHO and Chab Dai were on the ball, doing their job properly, Citipointe would have been asked, in mid 2008, the very questions I am asking the AFP to ask in April 2013.

COVER LETTER

It is my allegation (and it is only an allegation) that in July 2008, personnel from Citipointe church, based in Brisbane, illegally removed two young girls from the care and custody of their Cambodian parents in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

In the enclosed document entitled FACTS I have laid out, on a time line, the facts that are pertinent to my allegation.

The Cambodian parents are named Yem Chanthy and Both Chhork. The live in a small room in a suburb of Phnom Penh that does not have a postal address as we understand such an address to be. The daughters of theirs removed from their care by Citipointe church are named Rosa and Chita. The spellings of these names is flexible. Chita is also known as Srey Mal. In July 2008 Rosa was six years old and Chita five years old.

Citipointe church’s address in Brisbane is 322 Wecker Road, Caringdale 4152.

The two church representatives I have been corresponding with are named Pastor Leigh Ramsay and Pastor Brian Mulheran.

The address of the NGO that Citipointe runs in Cambodia (The ‘She Rescue Home’) is not known to me.

Citipointe refuses to provide copies of documents (contracts, agreements) pertinent to demonstrating the legality of the church’s actions in removing Rosa and Chita from the care of their family. For close to five years Yem Chanthy and Both Chhork have been asking Citipointe to return their daughters. The church refuses to do so.

In my mind the legality of the church’s actions hinges on the existence or non‐ existence of contracts and agreements that the church claims to have but copies of which it refuses to provide to Yem Chanthy and Both Chhork. Or to myself as the parents’ advocate.

best wishes