Leigh
Ramsay
322
Wecker Road
Carindale
QLD
4152
12th
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 16th 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 31st 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
No comments:
Post a Comment