Billie
Jean Slott
Legal
Advisor
Sciaroni
and Associates No 24, Street 462
Sangkat,
Tonle Bassac
PhmomPenh
9th March 2014
Dear
Billie Jean
It
is now 9 days since I received the following email from you:
Dear James
I have been
engaged by GDG to review documentation that has been reviewed by the
organization.
Please note I am
instructed to have no further correspondence with you. I will not respond to
any emails that you write nor will I feel obligated to report to you as you are
not the client.
Best regards
Billie
I
do appreciate that you have been asked, by the Global Development Group, to
play a role in this matter at the last minute – at the end of a process that
began more than five years ago. And yes, there is a lot of correspondence to
wade through. However, as a lawyer, you know that the only correspondence that
matters here is that which relates to the legality of Citipointe church’s
actions in 2008. As for the rest of the correspondence, let the Spin Doctors
have their fun with that!
As
resident in Cambodia, as someone practicing law here, you will have a better
understanding of the judicial system than I do. However, I have had enough
experience with it to know that it is hopeless and incompetent. And that is
putting it mildly and politely. It has been suggested to me many times this
past five years that I might like to meet with ‘the police’ who would be able
to arrange for the release of Rosa and Chita. I have declined all such offers,
perhaps foolishly.
The
question I ask myself now is this: Have you been employed by GDG to provide a
legal opinion regarding Citipointe’s actions in 2008 in terms of Australian law
or in terms of Cambodian law? Actually there is little difference between
Australian law and Cambodian law in the matter of Rosa and Chita’s removal.
There is a world of difference, however, between the two counties in the administration
of their respective laws.
As
you will see from the attached letter to Ms Sam Mostyn, the Cambodian legal
system can be abused by the likes of Citipointe church to present to a court
whatever nonsensical allegations it chooses to. Facts and evidence are not
required. Allegations will suffice. And the person against whom these
allegations have been made (myself in this instance) do not even find out what
they are until 17 months later and only then because Judge Phou Pov Sun allowed
me to look at the file.
No
doubt you will have seen the court document dated 30th Oct 2012. I
hope that the following questions arose for you – as I am sure they would have
if it were me you were representing and not Citipointe church. Yes, Billie, in
reality you have been brought on board to defend Citipointe. I did not, as my
mother used to say in situations such as this, come down in the last shower! In
order to appear credible itself, the Global Development Group must stand by
Citipointe and do all t can to stop people such as myself asking questions.
-
Is anything in this statement by Nicole Roberts true? Any evidence at all in
support of any of her allegations?
-
Why has James Ricketson not been provided with any information at all regarding
Ms Roberts’ allegations this past 17 months?
-
Why has this warrant sat on Judge Phou Pov Sun’s desk for 17 months and only
been executed two days after Geoff Armstrong wrote to me in terms that now clearly
refer to this document?
-
How is it that Geoff Armstrong knows of the content of the warrant but the
person against whom the allegations have been made does not?
The
answer to all of these questions is, of course, “This is Cambodia!” If you have
money and power you can do what you like in this country!
In
your advice to the Global Development Group will you be taking any moral
considerations into account? Will you be applying any of the legal principles
that would apply in Australia? Or is
your job to find each and every loophole within the Cambodian judicial system
to thwart Chanti and Chhork’s attempts to get their daughters back? It would,
for instance, be very easy to see to it that the allegations against me, which
have sat in a file this past 17 months, can sit in a file for another 17
months; that Geoff Armstrong or his replacement (there are a few good reasons
why he should be sacked) can write a curt letter to me in two years saying that
due process necessitates the completion of the police investigation etc. You
could orchestrate all this, Billie, with ease. I have no reason to believe you
will or that the though would cross your mind but I have been coming to
Cambodia for too many years to discount the possibility.
It
is, of course, imperative now that GDG do all it can to prevent the return of
Rosa and Chanti to their family. For the girls to be returned to the family
would be de facto admission that Citipointe should not have kept the girls for
any longer than a few months – until Nov 2008 when the family lived on a house
boat and the parents had two income streams. The return of the girls would
raise questions about GDG’s complicity in the illegal detention of Rosa and
Chita, which in turn would raise a whole host of questions about GDG that I am
sure it would not want discussed openly in any public arena.
You
know full well, Billie, that behavior of the kind manifested by Citipointe church
would, in Australia, see Pastor Leigh Ramsay, Helen Shields and Rebecca Brewer
charged and in court before a judge. They would be forced to answer serious
charges relating to the document these three women (pretending to be from LICADHO)
induced Chanti to sign on 31st. July 2008, amongst many other charges.
Legal proceedings would also involve Pastor Brian Mulheran being asked, under
oath, questions relating to his letter of 21st Feb in which he
issued scarcely veiled threats against me. And, of course, questions relating
to the failure of the Global Development Group’s monitoring and assessment
processes to detect and then deal appropriately with the illegal removal of
children by a GDG-funded NGO – an NGO run by a church which, the evidence
suggests, GDG’s Executive Director, Geoff Armstong, is a member of!
I
imagine that there must be times when using Cambodian law (or the lack of it,
in reality) to help your clients, whilst at the same time obeying the dictates
of your own moral conscience, must be challenging. What do you do if, in order
to fulfill the brief provided to you by your client, you must turn a blind eye
to the human rights abuses that will inevitably flow from the advice you give,
if taken up? If indeed GDG has brought you on board to find legal loopholes, to
find ways of using a corrupt and
incompetent Cambodian judiciary to prevent Chanti and Chhork getting their
daughters back, you may well succeed in the short term. In the long term, I
have the footage – graphic evidence of what has taken place that no number of
spin doctors and lawyers is going to be able to refute.
In
this instance, Citipointe church was, in 2008, in clear breach of laws that
would apply in Australia if the church had fostered Rosa and Chita. In 2008
Citipointe was also in breach of Cambodian law since, as I am sure you know by
now, the MOU with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not give the church to
hold Rosa and Chita against their parents express wishes after August 11th
2008.
I
now know the contents of this MOU but do not have a hard copy of it – a hard
copy that I will require to commence legal proceedings against Citipointe
church in Australia. There are numerous ways that I can acquire a copy of this
MOU, including asking the Hon Julie Bishop to provide it and, if this does not
yield results, making a suing Citipointe in the Supreme Court of Queensland.
This would involve considerable time and expense on my part to acquire a
document that the Global Development Group has in its possession.
This
letter to you, as a lawyer, is to place on record that I have, several times
now, requested that the Global Development Group provide Chanti, Chhork and
myself with a copy of this MOU. The Global Development Group not only refuses
to do so but refuses to provide any reason for not doing so. Natural justice
demands that any organization (government or non-government) that removes
children from their family, must provide a reason for doing so. Natural justice
demands that the parents be provided with copies of any and all documents
relating to the legality of the organizations removal of their children – both
government and non-government. Natural justice demands that the parents be
informed as to the reasons why their children have been removed; be provided an
opportunity to respond to any allegations made against them that have led to
the loss of their children and lodge an appeal; to be informed as to their
visitation rights with their children; to be informed as to the rights of the
children to be brought up, if justifiably institutionalized against the parents
wishes, in accordance with their own religion, customs and traditions; that the
parents be informed as to what they must do to have their children returned to
their care.
Citipointe
church has abrogated all of these parental and children’s rights. The Global
Development Group has, since it entered into a funding relationship with
Citipointe, been complicit in these human rights abuses. In March 2014 the
Global Development Group is complicit in the illegal removal of the girls in
2008 and their continued detention in 2014. Regardless of what the family’s
circumstances might have been in mid 2008, today they are land-owners with a
home, a rice paddy, a tuk tuk and 3 children in a private school. There is no
reason for them not to be returned to their family.
You
may well have the Global Development Group as your client, Billie, but you also
have a responsibility, under Australian law (if not Cambodian law) to see to it
that the human rights of Chanti and Chhork are not further abrogated as a
result of your advice.
My
letter of today to Ms Sam Mostyn, attached, will fill you in on at least one of
the behind-the-scenes developments of the past few days.
best
wishes
James
Ricketson
No comments:
Post a Comment