Rosa and Chita to be returned to Chanti and Chhork this week?

Leigh Ramsay

322 Wecker Road

Carindale

QLD 4152                                                                                          

20^th Sept. 2013

Dear Leigh

Following on from my letter of 12th Sept.

The meeting with Citipointe that Chanti and Chhork had been told would take place on Monday (16th Sept) did not take place. The family drove in Chhork's tuk tuk from Prey Veng for the meeting. Again, they were disappointed. 

Chanti, convinced that Rosa and Chita are to be returned to her this week, decided to stay in Phnom Penh until they were. After four days of waiting - for both a meeting with Citipointe and/or the release of her daughters - her mother, Vanna, and three of her children returned to Prey Veng to take care of their livestock. Chanti and Chhork, however, are determined to stay in Phnom Penh until Rosa and Chita are returned to them - both parents excited at the prospect of being re-united with their daughters after half of their lives have been taken up living in the Citipointe 'She Rescue Home'. 

If Chanti is mistaken in her belief, transmitted to her by LICADHO, that Rosa and Chita will be returned to her and Chhork this week please do her the courtesy of telling her so. If you have no intention of returning them this week, please do them the courtesy of telling them so and why. 

The meeting that did not take place on Monday does not fill me with much confidence that Citipointe intends to return Rosa and Chita at all - regardless of whatever requests have been made to your church by LICADHO to provide evidence in support of (a) the legality of Rosa and Chita's removal in mid 2008 and (b) a reason why the girls should not be returned to their family immediately. 

As I am tired of pointing out (as I am sure you are tired of hearing), in Australia you, Rebecca Brewer and Helen Shields would have been charged with criminal offences for lying and deceiving a vulnerable mother into giving up her daughters as the three of you did with Chanti and your sham 31st July 'contract'. In Cambodia, however,, you and other similarly unscrupulous NGOs can steal the children of poor Cambodians with impunity - secure in the knowledge that Chab Dai will give such theft its blessing; secure in the knowledge that the English language newspapers for Cambodia will ask no questions, do no research or investigation and effectively aid and abet your kidnapping through their silence. And of course secure in the knowledge that the incompetent Ministry of Social Affairs will turn a blind eye.And so it is that multiple 'orphanage;' scams flourish in Cambodia. 

As for LICADHO, whilst this NGO has done nothing at all to assist Chanti and Chhork this past five years,Dr Kek Pung, President and clearly a caring and compassionate woman, is now trying to assist. Whether she and LICADHO will be successful in their quest to get Citipointe to prove that the removal of Rosa and Chita in mid 2008 was legal or not remains to be seen. Whether LICADHO is able to exert moral pressure, at the very least, to get Citipointe to release the church's young prisoners this week, likewise remains to be seen. 

If Citipointe wishes to argue in Sept 2013 that the removal for Rosa and Chita in mid 2008 was legal, present LICADHO (and of course Chanti and Chhork) with evidence in support of this proposition - copies of contracts or agreements with the Ministries of Foreign and Social Affairs the church claims to have entered into in 2008 and 2009. I have been asking you to do so for five years now. You refuse, because the removal of Rosa and Chita was illegal under Cambodian law. 

You, Rebecca Brewer and Helen Shields are guilty of kidnapping. Simple as that. You should be in jail, there 'She Rescue Home' should be shut down and insofar as any girls resident in it need to be cared for, let other NGOs that respect the Cambodian family unit support these girls in family and community environments. Let these girls grow up following they down religion and not being force-fed the poisonous form of Christianity practiced by Citipointe church. 

In the meantime Chanti, Chhork and their new baby wait in Phnom Penh for Citipointe to deliver Rosa and Chita into their care. They will not leave until they have their daughters back. Again, I am copying this letter to members of the Cambodia English language media and to Australia's new Minister for Foreign Affairs, the Hon Julie Bishop, in the hope that perhaps she, unlike her predecessors,, might take an interest in the unethical behaviour of Australian NGOs in 3rd world countries - NGOs that exploit materially poor and vulnerable Cambodian families such as Chanti and Chhork's.

best wishes

James Ricketson

LICADHO putting pressure on Citipointe church to release Rosa and Chita back into the care of their parents after five years of institutional living in the church's 'She Rescue Home'

Leigh Ramsay

322 Wecker Road

Carindale

QLD 4152                                                                                          

12^th Sept. 2013

Dear Leigh

Chanti was excited this morning to tell me, after hers and Chhork’s meeting with the NGO, that LICADHO had assured them that Rosa and Chita would be returned to them ‘soon’.

Whilst I was pleased for Chanti and Chhork I reminded her that Citipointe has been making such promises for five years and has never once adhered to any one of them. The first such promise (filmed) was in Nov 2008. You were going to return Rosa and Chita to their parents after the Water Festival, remember? The first of a litany of lies.

Chanti also told me that on Monday 16^th Sept. she and Chhork will be meeting with LICADHO and Citipointe church in Phnom Penh to discuss the practicalities of Rosa and Chita returning to live with their family in Prey Veng.

Chanti has asked me, as her advocate, to be present at the meeting on Monday. I will, of course, attend.  I will bring with me audio-visual material that will back up every allegation I have made in my correspondence this past five years. This can be viewed in the event that Citipointe decides to play fast and loose with the truth during this meeting with LICADHO. In the event that there is any disagreement between myself and Citipointe regarding who said what when we will have access to all of the correspondence that has taken place between Citipointe and myself in the form of my blog. The option of re-inventing the past will not be open to either Citipointe or myself.

I trust that in this meeting Citipointe will make clear to Chanti and Chhork whether or not the church intends to provide any form on ongoing assistance to the family as it moves towards total self-sufficiency when Rosa and Chita go home. As Chanti and Chhork will attest, and as correspondence between myself and the church makes clear, Citipointe has done absolutely nothing this past five years to facilitate re-integration of Rosa and Chita back into the family. Indeed, on occasions when Chanti’s other children were suffering from malnutrition (filmed), when Chanti had a tumour on her wrist that needed to be removed (filmed) and when, earlier this year Chanti required hospitalization for her pneumonia (filmed) your church refused to provide any financial assistance at all. The promises you made to me (in person) and Chanti in mid 2008 that you would be assisting the entire family in a move towards self-sufficiency were empty. Lies.  Rebecca Brewer’s explanation to me at the time as to why Citipointe would provide Chanti’s family with no assistance was as follows:

“Regarding continued support to Chanti, we are unable to assist with distributing this sort of aid. Our focus is to assist the children in our care as needed and the work we do with the parents is limited. If we were to be seen giving handouts to one individual parent it could prove very disruptive to the rest of the community.”

This email from Rebecca was written after you induced Chanti to place her thumb print on the 31^st July 2008 ‘contract’. In this same email exchange Rebecca made clear that it was Citipointe’s intention to keep Rosa and Chita until they were 18.

“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.” 

Had you and Rebecca behaved in this way in Australia you would both have been charged with one of a variety of crimes relating to kidnapping. In Cambodia you and other similarly unscrupulous NGOs can steal the children of poor Cambodian parents with impunity.

Only in the past year has it been possible for me to step in and provide Chanti and Chhork’s family with the kind of assistance that Citipointe promised and has never delivered. The family now owns a tuk tuk, a small block of land, a house, pigs, ducks and chickens and is well on the way to becoming self-sufficient. Yes, the family will almost certainly require some assistance from me in the future but it is not in the family’s interests that it become dependent on me financially; that self-sufficiency be achieved as soon as possible. This is my goal.

As I have mentioned before, the money invested by myself in helping Chanti and Chhork’s family become self-sufficient amounts to around $5,000. How much has it cost Citipointe to keep Rosa and Chita in an institution this past five years? Far in excess of $5,000. And how much money has Citipointe raised by way of donations and sponsorships by advertising Rosa and Chita, on the internet, as ‘victims of human trafficking’? Another outrageous Citipointe lie. And how much of the money raised by the church under false pretenses has been used to help the family become self-sufficient? Not one cent. Citipointe is, amongst other things, guilty of exploiting poor Cambodians to make money for your church. Perhaps you justify this to yourself with the warm fuzzy feeling it gives you to have won some souls for Jesus Christ. I am sure that Jesus Christ would much rather that these souls came to him of their own accord and were not forced, with a metaphorical gun at their head, to adopt Citipointe’s very un-Christian form of Christianity.

I look forward to the meeting with you and or a representative of Citipointe church on Monday.

best wishes

James Ricketson

The Cambodia Daily and the Phnom Penh Post refuse to investigate and report on the removal of two girls from their materially poor family over five years ago.

It is clear from their lack of response to my two ‘open letters’ (26^th August and 4^th Sept.) that neither the Cambodia Daily nor the Phnom Penh Post will investigate the removal of two girls from their materially poor family over five years ago.

Neither newspaper has accepted my offer to provide them with a colour photocopy of the ‘contract’ signed by the mother with her thumb print. This ‘contract’ formed the supposed legal basis for the removal of the parents’ daughters in mid 2008 – until the fraudulent nature of the ‘contract’ was revealed and Citipointe decided that these two girls (aged 5 and 6 at the time of their removal) were not victims of poverty but ‘victims of human trafficking.’

The newspapers’ refusal to view and have legally evaluated this key piece of evidence is an abrogation of one of the fundamental duties of a journalist – to look, with a dispassionate eye, at the facts. To quote Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

"Silence in the face of evil is itself evil.”

I do not think it is too much of a stretch of the word’s meaning to describe the illegal removal of two daughters from their materially poor family by wealthy Christians as ‘evil’. Edmund Burke’s admonition is also relevant here:

“All that is needed for the forces of evil to succeed is for enough men to do nothing.”

‘To do nothing’, to remain silenct, is the position the Cambodia Daily and the Phnom Penh Post have adopted.

Why this is so, why neither newspaper is interested in demonstrable fact, in evidence (the 31^st July 2008 ‘contract’ qualifies as both) I can only conjecture. Is it because they fear being sued by Citipointe church for asking questions? Or is it that they do not want, for reasons of self-preservation, to publish articles critical of NGOs that make up a significant part of their readership? When did either newspaper conduct any significant investigation into the modus operandi of any NGO in Cambodia? Or the appropriateness of having so many NGOs in Cambodia who, whilst providing a wonderful lifestyle for individual NGOs, do little or nothing to improve the lot of the poor Cambodians they are supposedly here to help? (In 18 years of visiting Cambodia the malnourishment level sits at 40% and  tens of thousands of Cambodians have had their land and homes stolen from them despite the mountains of reports written by NGOs!)

As far as Citipointe being litigious, indeed the church is. Twice it has threatened to sue me. It has not done so as this would necessitate producing, in a court of law, evidence that the church’s removal of the girls from their family was lawful and that my suggesting that it was unlawful was defamatory. Citipointe does not want a spotlight of this kind to be shone on its activities in Cambodia. Journalists in Australia would start to ask questions of the kind I have been asking for five years and which both the Cambodia Daily and Phnom Penh Post refuse to ask. Or, if the questions have been asked by either newspaper, refuse to report on Citipointe’s refusal to answer them.

In the event that either newspaper had decided to ask a few questions, both would have been remiss to presume that all or any of what I have written in my blogs is true. Indeed, a competent journalist should not take my word for anything at all. S/he should just deal with the facts (incontrovertible facts) which, in brief, are these:

(1) An NGO removed two girls from their family in mid 2008.

(2) After the removal the NGO got the mother of the two girls to place her thumb print, on 31^st July 2008, on a document that she could not read.

(3) The NGO then told the mother (and myself, in writing) that in accordance with the ‘contract’ the church intended to keep the girls (aged 5 and 6 at the time) until they are 18 and that her visitation rights were limited to 24 hours per year. 

These are facts. They are not opinions. They are demonstrably true. Citipointe would not argue with them. Indeed, the church could not argue with them as the facts are all well documented in email exchanges and recorded conversations.

Only one question would have been needed to be asked to kick off an investigation by either newspaper:

“Is this 31^st July 2008 ‘contract’ legally binding under Cambodian law?”

A lawyer from either newspaper could have looked at the ‘contract’ and provided a legal opinion as to its validity in accordance with Cambodian law. If the lawyer had said, “This is not a contract that gives the NGO the right to hold the two girls contrary to the express wishes of the parents,” the next question for an investigative journalist would have been a no-brainer:

“What legal authority did Citipointe have, in mid-2008, to remove the two girls from their family and retain custody of them despite repeated requests from their parents that they be returned to their family?”

Nothing in what I have suggested here would have required that either newspaper believed anything that I have written about this matter on two blogs. All that was required was the asking of a few questions, the writing of a few emails and on obtaining a legal opinion in relation to the July 31^st 2008 ‘contract’. Standard operating procedure for any journalist and tasks that would not have taken more than a few hours to perform.

The Cambodia Daily and Phnom Penh Post have shown no interest in (a) viewing the ‘contract’, (b) in asking their newspaper’s lawyer to read and assess it (it is less than one page long!) and (c) asking Citipointe what legal authority the church had to remove the girls in mid 2008 and hold them contrary to the express wishes of their parents.

If Citipointe had not able to or refused to provide evidence for the legality of its actions in removing Rosa and Chita in mid-2008, (not an unreasonable newspaper request) the next port of call for a journalist would have been the Ministry of Social Affairs. MOSAVY played no role at all in the removal of Rosa and Chita in mid 2008 but a competent journalist should not and would not have taken my word for it. S/he would have asked the Ministry when and why it became involved and how and why two girls whose family sought short term assistance as a result of their poverty (this is clear in the 31/7/08 ‘contract’) came to be re-defined as ‘victims of human trafficking’?

If a Cambodia Daily or Phnom Penh Post journalist had received any response at all from the Ministry, s/he would have learned that it was fully 15 months (and multiple requests from Chanti and Chhork that their daughters be returned, all well documented) before MOSAVY gave Citipointe retrospective permission to remove the girls – in late 2009.

The next question for a Cambodia Daily or Phnom Penh Post journalist could then have been:

“What legal authority did Citipointe have, between July 2008 and Nov 2009 to hold the girls contrary to the parents’ oft expressed wishes that they be returned?”

This is where, my own experience tells me, the trail being pursued by a competent journalist would have gone dead. Both Citipointe and MOSAVY, if they deigned to answer questions at all, would have told the journalist that when Citipointe registered with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs the church had the right to remove the girls, any girls, from their families without providing a reason or evidence that such removal was in the best interests of the children themselves.

In accordance with this logic, any NGO registered with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is free remove the children of poor parents from their families without being answerable or accountable MOSAVY, to Chab Dai (of which Citipointe is a member) or to anyone else – including, to date, LICADHO. Is this not a story worthy of at least a few phone calls and emails? In the case of the Cambodia Daily and the Phnom Penh Post it seems not!

NGOs must and should be held accountable for their actions and activities in Cambodia. This requires both transparency and an adherence to the precepts of accountability by NGOs. It also requires that the media, in this instance the English language press, ask questions and not allow itself to be intimidated into silence either by the fear of being sued or because criticism of NGOs might damage newspaper circulation or advertising revenue. (If there is a third possible reason for inaction I would love to know what it is.)

The NGO community should, I believe, welcome the expose of sham, incompetent NGOs that abrogate the rights (both legal and human) of the Cambodian people. These NGOs should not be welcome as part of the NGO community.

The media could play a very important role in exposing fraudulent NGOs. Both the Cambodia Daily and the Phnom Penh Post are failing to hold NGOs accountable or to demand transparency from them.  And so it is, in the absence of any form of media oversight, that Citipointe church can continue to hold Chanti and Chhork’s daughters without either parent knowing why the girls were removed in the first place or what they must do to have them returned to their care.

The NGO community needs to pay attention to those NGOs in their midst whose actions bring the whole NGO community into disrepute

I have arrived back in Cambodia to continue with my documenting of Sam Rainsy and the CNRP’s campaign for social justice, a free and fair result to the election and to see real change take place in Cambodia.

I hope, if they are successful, that one of the changes that will quickly take place under a new government is the monitoring to the activities of NGOs to see that unscrupulous operators such as Citipointe church cannot set up shop here and take advantage of (exploit) poor Cambodians who can so easily be tricked into giving up their children.

Citipointe is not alone in practicing this effective theft of children. There are several NGOs that I know of doing it – some well known and with very high profiles. It remains a mystery to me why it is that the Cambodian media turns a blind eye to the activities of these NGOS whilst relentlessly pursuing Cambodian government bodies that are similarly neither transparent or accountable. For as long as the media remains silent such NGOs will continue to thrive and prosper at the expense of the Chanti and Chhorks of Cambodia.

As I have written before, if a brothel owner had used the same techniques used by Citipointe to induce Chanti to give up her daughters, s/he would find an array of NGOs moving heaven and earth to see them charged and jailed. If it is a Christian NGO stealing children, though, it seems perfectly OK. No questions will be asked.

In the meantime, more than five years down the track, Citipointe church retains custody of Rosa and Chita. The church makes sporadic promises to Chanti and Chhork but never keeps them. The Ministry of Social Affairs is asleep at the wheel – at best incompetent and at worst corrupt and receiving payment for allowing NGOs such as Citipointe to act as they choose without regard to Cambodian or international law and without regard for the rights (both human and legal) of Chanti and Chhork. Thankfully there will be a new Minister of Social Affairs in the new government (the last one was useless) and it is to be hoped that he or she will move to prevent the exploitation of poor Cambodian families by unscrupulous NGOS.