James Ricketson
Phnom Penh
015 611 478; 017 898 361
Directors
of the Global Development Group Board
Unit
6, 734 Underwood Road
Rochedale, QLD 4123
3rd March 2014
Dear
David James Pearson, Geoffrey Winston
Armstrong
Ofelia (fe) Luscombe, Alan
Benson, David Robertson
Today
I conducted an interview with ‘Srey Pal’, whom I mentioned to you in a recent
letter. I decided to interview Srey Pal
and her brother ‘Seny’ separately to minimize the possibility that they might
influence each other with their answers. Seny was not present for my interview
with Srey Pal.
I
videotaped the interview. In the first part of it I got Srey Pal to tell me the
whole story uninterrupted in Khmer. I then got what she had said translated and
conducted the rest of the interview in English and Khmer. I went over key parts
of the story she told me three and four times to make sure that nothing had
been lost in translation. Srey Pal’s story, in brief, is very similar to the
one she told me in broken English last week. It is this:
Srey
Pal is the oldest daughter in a very poor family. For reasons that are not
relevant to this story, she became the family’s primary breadwinner. It was
struggle for her to feed, clothe and accommodate her younger siblings.
Srey
Pal was approached by a Khmer woman whom she knew worked for an NGO that I know, from the GDG website, to be funded
by the Global Development Group. The Khmer woman told her that if she and her younger
brother, Seny, were to place their thumb prints on a document accusing a
foreigner of taking Seny to his hotel room for sex, the bribe solicited by the
police ($5,000) would be split between the police and Seny and Srey Pal. In
other words, Seny and Srey Pal would make $2,500 if they were to falsely
implicate a foreigner in having sex with Seny. Both Seny and Srey Pal refused
to sign the document.
The
reason why the Khmer woman had approached Seny and Srey Pal with this
proposition was that Seny had befriended this particular foreigner, who had
given Seny a mobile phone. Whoever it was that was keeping an eye on this
particular foreigner presumed that his motives were not pure and, it seems,
presumed that Seny had agreed to have sex with this man in exchange for a
mobile phone. It was their presumption that Seny had had sex with him that led
the police and the Khmer woman from the GDG funded NGO to make the offer they
did. When Seny denied having sex with the man the police took him into custody
and delivered him to the NGO funded by the Global Development Group. A doctor working for this NGO examined Seny
and claimed that there was no evidence that he had had sex with the foreigner.
And Seny continued to deny that he had.
Despite
the lack of evidence and Seny’s denial, the Khmer woman continued to put
pressure on Seny and his sister, Srey Pal, to sign the document with their
thumb print and earn themselves $2,500. This was the equivalent of around two
years earnings for Seny and Srey Pal combined. They had younger siblings to take care of and the
temptation to place their thumb print on the document was great.
Eventually,
Seny did sign the document with his thumb print – not because he had had sex
with the foreigner but because he and his family, without a mum and dad capable
of earning money at the time, could not afford to eat or to pay rent. Seny
signed with his thumb print. The foreigner is now in jail. I cannot speculate
on the foreigners guilt or innocence of crimes against other children but, in
the case of Seny, both he and his sister stick to their story that he did not
have sex with Seny.
After
the foreigner was arrested, Seny, one of only two bread-winners for the family,
was taken into custody by the Global Development Group funded NGO. What
authority this NGO had to take one of the only two bread-winners for the family
into custody I do not know and was not able to find out from Srey Pal I do,
however, know that Seny’s 7 year old younger sister had to step into his shoes
and become one of the family’s primary bread-winners and so was (and continues
to be) exposed to the dangers that any 7 year old child selling books is to tourist is exposed to.
In
rescuing Seny from ‘the street’, the Global Development Group-funded NGO, had
made it necessary for his 7 year old sister to work under conditions that
forced her to be confronted by the same dangers, and they are very real, that
the NGO had ‘rescued’ Seny from. This is the reality, on the ground, that
well-meaning but incompetent NGOs intent on ‘rescuing’ children are all too
often blissfully unaware of.
With
what no doubt were the best of intentions, this particular NGO ‘rescued’ Seny –
thus depriving the family with one of its two primary bread-winners. And all
thanks to an NGO funded by the Global Development Group. Big hearted
Australians who have read the Global Development Group’s glossy brochures,
believe that they are ‘making a difference’; that they are helping
materially poor Cambodian families (and
other such materially poor families elsewhere in the world) when in fact they
are contributing to the breakup of families
and to the alienation of these children from their
families, from their communities, from their religion and their culture. With
the best intentions in the world, and with ‘best intentions’ underwritten by
the tax-deductible status of their financial contributions to the Global
Development Group, generous Australians are enabling, through their donations,
the very human rights abuses that I have outlined in this and other blog
entries.
Chanti
and Chhork will be in Phnom Penh again tomorrow if any one of your three Global
Development group staff based in Phnom Penh are interested in meeting with
them. I would also be quite happy to
screen for a Khmer-speaking member of GDG’s Cambodia-based staff the interview
I filmed with ‘Srey Pal.’
Finally,
curious as I am to find out how it is that Geoff Armstrong knew two days prior
to its happening that I was to be charged with ‘hindering’, I have written the
following to the Phnom Phnom court. I will have it translated in the morning
and deliver it personally by hand.
“Could you please explain to me
how it is that Geoff Armstrong, Executive Director of the Global Development
Group, an Australian NGO that provides funds to Citipointe church’s ‘SHE Rescue
Home’, knew on 24th Feb that I was to be charged with ‘hindering’, when
the court document given to me is dated 26th Feb?”
best
wishes
James
Ricketson
No comments:
Post a Comment