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
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