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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