Leigh
Ramsey
322
Wecker Road
Carindale
QLD
4152
26th
March 2014
Dear Leigh
I will begin this letter with a
request I have made dozens of times now this past 5 years:
“Please provide
Chanti and Chork with a copy of the MOU that Citipointe entered into with the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2008.”
Do you still believe this 2008 MOU
gave your church the right to remove girls from their families? If so, why was
there any necessity to present mothers and fathers with sham ‘contracts’ such
as the one you tricked Chanti and her mother,Vanna, into signing on 31st
July 2008?
This 2008 MOU should not be confused
with the Nov 2009 MOU that Citipointe entered into with the Ministry of Social
Affairs. Could you please sup[ply Chanti and Chhork with a copy of this MOU
also – as we have been requesting for the past four years. The only knowledge
we have of its contents is the following from MoSAVY - the
sole justification the Ministry of Social Affairs has provided in five and a
half years for its decision to turn a blind eye to Citipointe church’s illegal
removal:
For the SHE resuce (sic) project,
according to the agreement made with the Ministry of Social Affairs, Veterans
and Youth Rehabilitation, the organization has projected to help victims of
human trafficking and sex trade as well as families which fall so deep in
poverty. After questioning directly, the ministry believes that Rosa must have
been in any of the above categories.
That MoSAVY ‘believes’
(as opposed to knows) that Rosa must have been in any of the above categories’
does not suggest much in the way of thorough research or the asking of
questions. Certainly, the Ministry never spoke with Chanti or Chhork. If they had they would have discovered
that in the same month the Ministry wrote this letter, Chhork was running a
boat on the Bassac River for tourists, Chanti had a stall by the river selling
snacks to tourists and the family lived on the house boat – in much greater
comfort than the majority of Cambodians.
You will see, from the attached
letter to the Investigating Judge, dated 25th March, that my
participation in any court proceedings in April is contingent on being supplied
with a copy of the MOU. If Citipointe had no legal right to remove and detain
Rosa and Chita in the first place, the whole house of cards upon which
Citipointe’s latest attempt to have me arrested and jailed falls into a heap.
Indeed, if Citipointe cannot produce the 2008 MOU or if, on producing it, it is
found to give your church none of the rights you have exercised this past five
years, it is you who should be charged, not me.
I know nothing about the charges that
Citipointe has laid against me in this new court proceeding other than what I
have read in the newspapers. ‘Blackmail’, it seems! Given the date on which I
am supposed to have ‘blackmailed’ Citipointe it would appear that this is one
month after Pastor Brian Mulheran threatened to have me ‘forcibly removed.’ To
refresh your memory, Leigh, here is an extract from Pastor Mulheran’s 21st
Feb 2013 letter:
“Using
the law is the last thing that we want to see happen, because for you to be
convicted of a crime and serve a sentence may mean that you will never have the
opportunity to re-enter Cambodia again.”
Intimidation pure and simple! And it
turns out that Pastor Mulheran’s scarcely veiled threat was not just the bluff
and bluster of a Christian bully but very real indeed.
I have, this morning, been to the
Phnom Penh District Court in an attempt to hand deliver a Khmer version of the
attached letter to the relevant judge. It was not possible. I need a Case
Number or a copy of a warrant/summons in order to find out the name of the
judge dealing with this matter. Could you please provide me with this
information?
Given that the illegal removal of
Rosa and Chita has, at last, caught the attention of others in a position to
demand answers to questions, here are a few that I hope will be asked:
(1) Has Citipointe, at any time this
past five years, provided any support at all to Chanti’s family? If so, could
the church please provide information in relation to their support, what form
it took, when it was provided and so on.
It is my Chanti and Chhork’s
contention (backed up by my own observations) that Citipointe has not given $1
in support to the family this past five years.
(2) Has Citipointe, at any time in
the past five years, drawn up a re-integration program with the express desire
to see Rosa and Chita re-integrated back into their family?
I have requested this many times but
to no avail. There has, I contend, never 3ver been any attempt made to
re-integrate Rosa and Chita back into the family.
(3) Why has Citipointe, this past
couple of years, repeatedly referred to Rosa and Chita as ‘victims of human
trafficking’ when it is clear from the sham 31st July 2008
‘contract’ that it was poverty that drove Chanti and her mother to accept the
assistance being offered by Citipointe?
There are many more questions, but
these will suffice and I trust that these questions will be asked by people who
are not prepared to accept ‘spin’ answers; that whatever answers Citipointe
does provide are checked for their factual accuracy. This last point is very
important as both you and Pastor Brian Mulheran have played fast and loose with
the truth so often that nothing either of you say can be relied on to be true.
Citipointe has developed a very
successful money-raising and evangelizing model with the help of the Global
Development Group. Your church is able to use AusAID and ACFID approved and
tax-deductible funds to remove girls from their families and indoctrinate them
into Citipointe’s version of the Christian faith. You have been able to manage
this right under the noses of so many AusAID, DFAT and ACFID officials who
should, if they were doing their jobs properly, have asked to see the 2008 MOU,
the 2009 MOU and all other agreements, contracts, MOUs relating to the removal
of Rosa and Chita. These same officials should have also insisted that the
parents – Chanti and Chhork – be provided with copies of these documents. They
have not. They have been asleep at the wheel.
Now, with this money-raising/evangelizing
model firmly established Citipointe has acquired a substantial number churches
in Goa, India with the intention of setting up 'rescue homes' in that state. If
your church replicates its Australian fund-raising and evangelizing model in India
it is fair to presume that the following will occur:
(1) Poor Indian parents will be
tricked into giving up their daughters.
(2) These girls will then be
indoctrinated into Citipointe’s version of the Christian faith.
(3) Australian tax-payers, via
tax-deductible donations, will be footing the bill for your Indian evangelizing
venture.
This, of course, is a matter for the
Indian authorities to deal with (and I will be warning the relevant Goan
authorities to be very careful in their dealings with Citipointe.) However, if
Australian tax dollars (through tax-deductible donations) are used to break up
materially poor Indian families and to indoctrinate the daughters of these
families into Citipointe's particular brand of Pentecostalism, this is a matter
that should be of interest to both AusAID and ACFID. If this evangelizing is
assisted by funds contributed to Citipointe by the Global Development Group in
contravention of AusAID rules and the ACFID Code of Conduct it is to be hoped
that both AusAID and ACFID will stop turning a blind eye to such braches and
the human rights abuses that arise from them.
If you could please supply me with
details of the case you have brought against me re ‘blackmail’ I would greatly
appreciate it.
I have attached, also, a copy of the
letter I wrote to Pastor Brian Mulheran on 4th March – a letter
which, of course, has resulted in no response at all.
best wishes
James Ricketson
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