Are Chab Dai and LICADHO complicit in breaking Cambodian law by aiding and abetting Citipopinte in the church's removal of Rosa and Chita from the care for their family in mid - 2008?

Dear Naly and Helen

This week, on a visit to Cambodia, I will speak with the Phnom Penh anti-human trafficking and juvenile protection department police regarding the removal of Rosa and Chita from their family in mid-2008. I will be telling the police nothing that is not outlined, in exhaustive detail, in my blog; nothing that I cannot back up with audio-visual evidence; nothing that Chab Dai and LICADHO has not been aware of for close to five years.

A significant part of my evidence will involve communications between myself and Citipointe  in 2008 regarding the role Chab Dai and LICADHO played in the removal of Rosa and Chita from the care of their parents close to five years ago. (I will publish this online later in the day) As you have both been aware since mid-2008 Citipointe has insisted many times (and this is well documented) that it was acting in conjunction with Chab Dai and LICADHO when the church removed Rosa and Chita in mid-2008, when the church refused the parents (and myself) access to the girls and set about alienating them from their family, their community, their culture and their religion – a process of alienation that has gone on for close to five years without a peep of protest from either Chab Dai or LICADHO.

If, in mid 2008, Citipointe did not have a legal right to remove Rosa and Chita from their family contrary to the express and often expressed wishes of their parents Chanti and Chhork, both Chab Dai and LICADHO are complicit in failing to protect Rosa and Chita (and their parents) from human trafficking – in this instance the human trafficking being conducted by a Christian NGO – The She Rescue Home run by Citipointe church.

It has been abundantly obvious for years (indeed, since late 2008) that Citipointe’s modus operandi is to induce the parents of poor families to give their ‘at risk’ daughters to the church, get the parent (or parents) to sign a sham contract, change the terms and conditions that they promised to the parents and take control of the girls’ lives and then, amongst other things, make money for the church through donations, sponsorship and the conducting of ‘poverty tours’ in which luck poverty tourists can pay to wash the hair of a ‘victim of Human Trafficking’.

Yes, there may be the occasional genuine victim of human trafficking resident in the She Rescue Home but in the main it is just poor girls whose parents have been given food parcels and made false promises. Citipointe has been able to sustain this scam with, it seems, the tacit approval of the trafficking section of the Ministry of Social Affairs. It is to be hoped that the current policy of closing sham orphanages (and sham Rescue Homes) will bring this practice to an end.

I trust that the anti-human trafficking police will ask of Chab Dai and LICADHO the questions I have been asking and which you have both refused to answer this past close-to-five years:

Were Chab Dai and LICADHO complicit in the removal of Rosa and Chita from their family or has Citipointe been lying all these years about the involvement of both organizations?

If Chab Dai and LICADHO were complicit, both organizations have been, at worst, guilty of aiding and abetting Citipointe in the commission of a crime and at best, of turning a blind eye to Citipointe’s human rights abuses and breaking of Cambodian law.

If, after close to five years of asking Citipointe does now, in May 2013, produce documentary evidence of the legality of its actions in mid 2008 questions still remain:

Why have Chanti and Chhork never had it explained to them why their daughters were removed from their care?

Why have Chant and Chhork never been provided with copies of any contractual agreements made between Citipointe and the Ministries of Foreign and Social Affairs?

Why have Chanti and Chhork never been informed by either Citipointe or MOSAVY what they must do to get their daughters back?

Given that Chanti and Chhork are now home owners living close to their extended families in Prey Veng, why does Citipointe retain custody of Rosa and Chita?

I trust that the police I will speak with this week will ask these very questions and that the answers will be made publicly available.