Mr
Lao Lin
‘Anti
Human Trafficking and Juvenile Protection Department’
Ministry
of Interior
#275
Preah Norodom Boulevard
Khan
Chamkar Morn
Phom
Penh
Cambodia
17th
May 2013
Dear Lao Lin
It was good to meet you on
Thursday 9th May, though frustrating for me that the interviewing
policeman did not, in my view, ask any of the questions that would have
furthered this investigation. On the two occasion when I tried to tell him
about the events surrounding the removal of Rosa and Chita (which I filmed at
the time) he cut me off. He was not interested. And, when I did try to say
anything at all about Citipointe he made no notes.
You will, perhaps, appreciate my
frustration at having failed, for close to five years now, to get Rosa and
Chita returned to the care of their family – only to find, on travelling to
Cambodia specifically to talk to the police, that the interviewing policeman
was more interested in how much money I paid for a bicycle in 1998 than in what
happened in July, and August 2008 – recorded by me in forensic detail. The
investigating officer conducting the interview was more interested in
Citipointe’s complaint about me than in collecting evidence in relation to this
investigation.
I never did find out what the
nature of Citipointe’s complaint about me but it was easy to read between the
lines of your investigating officers;’ questions. Had I ever been arrested? Did
I have a criminal record? Had I ever been alone with Rosa and Chita? How much
money had I spent on the girls? Did I want to take them to Australia? Clearly,
Citipointe, in its desperation, is playing the ‘pedophile card’. My interest in
this family must, in the distorted world view of these Christians, be motivated
by my base desires! Really, Lao Lin, if I was a pedophile and wanted to have my
wicked way with children there are much easier ways of going about this than
helping a poor family for 18 years. The easiest way would be to start up an NGO
for ‘orphans’ or ‘victims of human
trafficking’. One thing is certain. MOSAVY would not apply any checks to see if
the NGO was bona fide; to see whether the ‘orphans’ were in fact without mother
and father; to see whether the ‘victims of human trafficking’ were in fact
victims and not merely the daughters of poor parents who had been tricked into
signing, with their thumb prints, a document that they are then told gives total
control of the girls over to the NGO. This is what Citipointe did on 31st
July 2008 when the church got Chanti and her mother, Vanna, to put their thumb
prints on a fraudulent ‘contract’. Your interviewing officer admitted on
Thursday that this is not a legal document. So, Citipointe had no legal right
to be holding Rosa and Chita in August 2008 contrary to the express wishes of
their parents – unless, that is, Citipointe had already entered into an
agreement with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (or any other Cambodian
government department) to hold the girls against their parents’ wishes.
I am not trained as a policeman but I am also not stupid. The
obvious next step (obvious since August 2008) is to request of Citipointe that
it immediately produce whatever agreements the church had entered into between
31st July 2008 and 11th August 2008 with any Cambodian
department that gave Pastor Leigh Ramsay, Rebecca Brewer and Helen Shields the
legal right to retain Rosa and Chita against the wishes of their parents. If
Citipointe cannot supply documentary evidence of the legality of its action the
church it is guilty of breaching Article 8 Cambodia’s ‘Law on Suppression of Human Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation’.
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 of Cambodia’s ‘Law
on Suppression of Human Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation’ makes quite
clear what the punishment for such an offence is:
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.
Citipointe’s ‘version’ of
events and my ‘version’ of events leading up to and surrounding the removal of
Rosa and Chita may well be useful as background information but in terms of an
investigation the most (I am tempted to say ‘only’) fact of any relevant is
whether Citipointe’s maintenance of custody of Rosa and Chita through the
second half of 2008 and for most of 2009 was lawful or not. The continued
reference to ‘versions’ and ‘points of view’ are of little consequence when
there is hard evidence available. That Citipointe induced Chanti and her mother
(but not, for some reason, Rosa and Chita’s father, Chhork) to sign a
‘contract’ on 31st July 2008 is an indisputable fact. That Rosa and
Chita were held in the custody of Citipointe church in August 2008 is an
indisputable fact. That the 31st
July ‘contract’ is not a legal document is a fact. These three facts are
unaffected by either Citipointe’s ‘version’ or my ‘version’ of events. My
‘point of view’ is irrelevant here.
These three facts point very
strongly towards Citipointe being guilty, on 31st.July 2008, of
using deception to the ‘unlawful removal of a minor…by means of deception,
abuse of power or enticement.’
The three indisputable facts that are strongly suggestive of
Citipointe’s guilt can, of course, be countered by the church’s producing
documentary evidence that it had a legal right, in accordance with Cambodian
law, to take custody of Rosa and Chita on 31`st July regardless of the wishes
of the girls’ parents; that the church had a legal right to tell Chanti and
myself, on 11th August 2008, that Rosa and Chita would remain in the
custody of the church until they were 18. It seems that no-one is interested in asking Citipointe to prove
the legality of its actions on 31st July 2008x – not MOSAVY, not
Chab Dai, not LICADHO, not the Australian Embassy and not, to date anyway, the ‘Anti Human
Trafficking and Juvenile Protection Department’.
Your investigating officer on Thursday 9th May was
interested only in collecting a whole lot of irrelevant data that bears little
or no relationship to the matter in hand. Whether this was incompetence on his
part of if there is another reason I will not conjecture here. Either way, if
the ‘Anti Human Trafficking and Juvenile Protection Department’ is serious
about its investigation I fail to see how you cannot ask Citipointe to produce
the documentation that demonstrates the legality of its actions. And copies of
this documentation should be provided to Chanti and Chhork and to myself as
their advocate – as I have been requesting since Nov 2008.
On 10th May I
wrote yet another letter to Pastor Leigh Ramsay – the woman who was responsible
back in mid 2008 for removing Rosa and Chita from their parents’ care - a woman who lies with impunity (and this
can be proven) and who has never kept one of the promises she has made to
return Rosa and Chita to the family soon over the past close to five years.
Leigh Ramsay has been able to breach Cambodian law because MOSAVY simply has
not cared, this past five years, what foreign NGOs do with the children of poor
parents. There are signs that there may be a change of heart within MOSAVY;
that sham orphanages and ‘rescue homes’ for alleged ‘victims of Human
Trafficking’ will be shut down. I certainly hope so for the sake of all the
parents and relatives of children who are neither orphans nor victims but are
merely the children of poor families that have been induced, by poverty and/or
deception, into giving up their children to unscrupulous NGOs. These NGOs then
present themselves to the world, to their donors, their sponsors, as the
saviors of these children in order to raise money – little or none of which flows
to the families and communities from which these children have been removed.
I have attached a copy of
my latest letter to Leigh Ramsay, written on 10th May. I have also
published it online along with other letters I have written this past few years
in an attempt to get Rosa and Chita returned to the care of their family:
One of the frustrating
aspects of Thursday 9th May’s interview was the continual reference made
by the investigating officer to Rosa and Chita as ‘victims’. They are not and
never have been victims of human trafficking. In mid 2008 they were
merely the daughters of poor parents who asked for and were offered short term
assistance by Citipointe whilst in the midst of a financial crisis. This crisis
had passed by November 2008 but, when Chanti and Chhork asked for their
daughters to be returned, Citipointe church refused. And has refused ever since
– despite many promises made to the parents that reintegration would happen
soon.
I was filming the day
that Citipointe was recruiting 'victims of human trafficking' in
mid-2008. My footage shows clearly that Citipointe was recruiting
'victims' by handing out food parcels to the children and their parents.
Other footage I shot in
Nov 2008 shows Chanti and Chhork running two businesses down by the river: (1)
A stall selling sinks and snacks to tourists and (2) a boat that the family
both lived on and used as a second source of income. This footage also shows
Chhork on the phone to Citipointe asking that his and Chanti's daughters be
returned to them.
My footage also shows a
conversation between Chanti and two other young women who lived down by the
river about the fact that not one of the girls at the She Rescue Home in Nov
2008 was a ‘victim of human trafficking’; that all were the daughters of poor
families who had, like Chanti, been made false promises and had their daughters
removed from their care as a result of their applying their thumb prints to a
document they could not read and did not understand.
My footage, had I had an
opportunity to show it to the ‘Anti Human Trafficking and Juvenile Protection
Department’ would, at the very least, have led to the realization that there
were some important questions to ask of Citipointe. The opportunity to screen
the footage never arose because the interviewing officer brought the interview
to an end before he had managed to ask one relevant question. It was for this
reason that I refused to sign the record of interview.
best wishes
James Ricketson
No comments:
Post a Comment