Ms Sam
Mostyn
President
Australian Council for International Development 3rd March 2014
Dear Ms Mostyn
This is the 9th letter I have
written to you over the past three weeks. You have not answered one of my
questions to date but have left it to Chris Adams to provide the lamest of
excuses for not answering the two key questions:
“Does the Australian Council
for International Development believe that parents whose children have been
removed by an NGO have a right to be given copies of any agreements of
contracts the NGO (in this instance Citipointe church’s ‘SHE Rescue Home’,
funded by Australian tax-deductible dollars), has entered into with a
government department in the country in which such a removal has occurred?”
“In the event that Chanti and
Chhork proceed, through me, to make a complaint, will ACFID require of the
Global Development Group that it provide copies of all documents it has
acquired from Citipointe church relating to the legality of the church’s
removal of Rosa and Chita and their detention of the girls for five years
during which time Chanti and Chhork have repeatedly requested their return?”
Without an answer to this second
question it is impossible for Chanti and Chhork to make an informed decision as
to whether or not there s any point in lodging a complaint with the Australian Council for
International Development.
And now to Citipointe’s
allegation that I have ‘hindered’ the church in its attempts to ‘help
prostitutes or those at risk of prostitution’. Without wanting to muddy the
waters, I cannot resist pointing out that the expression ‘those at risk of
prostitution’ can, by an unscrupulous NGO such as Citipointe, be applied to any
girl in Cambodia between the ages of 5 and 16 who happens to come from a poor
family that might be tempted to render the girls ‘victims of human
trafficking’.
It may well be a faulty
translation of the 26th Feb court document that led to a
misunderstanding - namely that I was being charged with ‘prostitution’. This
cannot be said for the Phnom Penh Municipal Court telling Zsombor Peter last
night that I was being charged with posting pornography on my blog. Unless Zsombor
Peter is hearing impaired, this is what Judge Pu Povsun or his spokesman said.
By this morning, however, the accusation of posting pornography has given way
to my being accused of “hindering the work of an unnamed organization
(Citipointe church) in its efforts to help prostitutes or those at risk of
prostitution.”
The administration of
justice in Cambodia is a very flexible business and it may well be that the
nature of the charge against me will change again in the next couple of days!
As I mentioned in my
letter of Sunday evening, 2nd Feb, facts, evidence and truth are not
the key factors in a Cambodian court’s decision-making processes. That Judge Pu
Povsun will not even mention the name of organization that has brought the
charges against me speaks for itself of the administration of justice the
Cambodian judiciary. And what documents am I supposed to bring along to prove
that I have not been ‘hindering’ Citipointe? In any proper court of law the
onus is on the prosecution to prove guilt; not on the defendant to prove his or
her innocence.
It is highly unlikely
that Judge Pu Povsun’s court will have any interest at all in the hundred
(literally) of letters I have written to Citipointe church, to Chab Dai, to
LICADHO, to SISHA, to the Australian
Embassy, to three different Australian ministers of Foreign Affairs, to
many different journalists and, more recently, to the Global Development Group
and the Australian Council for International Development. In each and every one
of these letters I have been advocating on behalf of Chanti and Chhork to have
their daughters returned to their care. In not one of them will you find any
evidence that I have been ‘hindering’ Citipointe church in efforts to “help
prostitutes or those at risk of prostitution.” I am not even sure how it would
be possible for me to have ‘hindered’ even if I had so desired. And why, after five years of my ‘hindering’,
does the court wait until 26th Feb 2014 to charge me? A look at the
sequence of events of the past week raises some interesting questions.
On 24th Feb,
in his letter to me, Geoff Armstrong, Execvutive Director of the Global
Development Group wrote:
“…until the Cambodia Trafficking Police have fully investigated and
finalised the charge against you for allegedly hindering the reintegration
process.”
Two days later, 26th
Feb, a court document is issued which accuses me of ‘hindering’ Citipointe
church. How did Geoff know, two days before it was prepared by the court, that Judge
Pu Povsun was going to issue this warrant? Is Geoff psychic?
One possibility is that
Geoff received this information from Citipointe church whilst in the process of
conducting his own ‘thorough investigation’. The same question arises:
How did Citipointe know, two days beforehand, that Judge Pu Povsun was
going to issue this warrant?
There are other questions
that should be asked:
Is Geoff Armstrong a member of Citipointe church?
If he is, was it appropriate that Geoff conduct the ‘thorough
investigation’?
Did Geoff, before conducting his ‘thorough investigation’, notify the
board of the Global Development Group of his conflict of interest?
Did the board see no problem in Geoff conducting an investigation into
the activities of a church of which he is a member?
Did the GDG board recommend against Geoff conducting the ‘thorough investigation?
I have asked such
questions of the GDG board but it refuses to answer them. Indeed, the GDG
refuses to answer any questions at all. Such is the Global Development Group’s
commitment to transparency and accountability. Mind you, the same applies to
ACFID!
Geoff also writes, in his
letter to me of 24th Feb:
“We have been advised by DoSALVY (MoSALVY) that the SHE Rescue Home
Project (Global Development Group) cannot reintegrate the
Children until the Cambodia Trafficking Police have fully
investigated and finalised the charge against you…etc.”
Three points:
(1) I initiated the
investigation through Eric Meldrum at SISHA.
(2) The investigation
took place 10 months ago.
(3) In accordance with
what legal document was Citipointe church holding Rosa and Chita against the
express wishes up until the Cambodian Trafficking police began its
investigation?
There has been fairly
exhaustive correspondence relating to my interview with the ‘Cambodian
Trafficking Police’. For the time being, my letter to Mr Lao Lin of 17th
May 2013 will suffice.
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 occasions 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
2008 – 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.
I have not been supplied with a
copy of the report and so cannot respond to it in any way. It is time, Ms
Mostyn, for the Australian Council for International Development to start
taking an active interest in what is going on here. A start would be to answer
the two questions I have asked above.
best wishes
James Ricketson
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