Leigh
Ramsey
322
Wecker Road
Carindale
QLD
4152
5th
May 2014
Dear
Leigh
It is a month now since Judge Keo
Mony of the Phnom Penh Municipal Court found me guilty of having ‘threatened to
dishonour Citipointe church’, fined me $1,500 and gave me a two year suspended
jail sentence. This Kafkaesque exercise in legal nonsense was orchestrated and financed
by your church.
A second lot of charges remain –
‘profiting from prostitution’ and ‘hindering’. Equally nonsensical! Citipointe
is too gutless to level such absurd charges against me in Australia – a country
in which there is rule of law; a country in which evidence, facts and truth
would count for something in any legal action commenced by your church. Given
the way the Cambodian judicial system works, however, either or both these charges
could result in me receiving a custodial sentence – if this is what Citipointe
wants to pay for.
I will return to Cambodia in the
not-too-distant future and see what sentence the Phnom Penh Municipal Court
decides (with the assistance of Citipointe) is appropriate for the wicked
crimes of ‘profiting from prostitution’ and ‘hindering’.
Given that I will not be paying
the $1,500 fine imposed by Judge Keo Mony, no doubt you and Citipointe’s
lawyers will be giving some thought to the question of whether or not you
really do want to have me jailed in Cambodia.
I suspect that your church will do whatever is required to prevent this
from happening, since my incarceration would draw attention to Citipointe’s illegal
activities in Cambodia. It would also raise questions as to the way in which
Citipointe recently acquired its 100 ‘orphans’ in India and the extent to which
the forced conversion of these 100 Indian girls will be paid for with AusAID
approved tax-deductible dollars.
Whilst Citipointe can rely on
AusAID and ACFID to ask no questions, my being in jail would, I suspect, induce
some intrepid journalist to poke around and ask questions of the kind that
Citipointe and its funding partner, the Global Development Group, would prefer
not to answer. Yes, Citipointe would
then be able to employ its usual tactic - firing off threatening legal letters
to any journalist with the temerity to ask questions. This tactic may well work
with some journalists, some publications, but ultimately a fearless journalist
will come along who is not deterred by such bullying, such intimidation.
Interestingly, whilst
Citipointe’s vexatious accusations are dealt with by the Phnom Penh Municipal
Court, the complaint lodged by Chanti and Chhork against Citipointe church last
year has been ignored by the Phnom Penh Municipal Court. No prizes for guessing
why that may be the case!
The two judges involved in the
two court cases Citipointe has brought against me to date are not even remotely
interested in whether the church broke Cambodian law in 2008 when it removed Rosa
and Chita. And nor are Chanti and Chhork (or myself) in a position to pay the
money required to get them interested. So, in the wonderful Alice in Wonderland
world of the Cambodia judicial system, I can be found guilty of accusing
Citipointe of stealing Rosa and Chita whilst Citipointe is under no obligation
to provide evidence that the church did not steal the girls! And this farcical
state of affairs (tragically farcical for Chanti and Chhork) has the blessing
of ACFID, AusAID, DFAT and Minister for Foreign Affairs, the Hon Julie Bishop!
Fortunately, Leigh, I
retain my sense of humour – though it does desert me at those times when I see
the distress that your ongoing illegal detention of Rosa and Chita causes for
Chanti and Chhork. I feel particularly for Chhork as he is such a good man,
dare I say a noble man. It is hard to imagine a better, more dedicated, more
loving father than Chhork; a better husband for Chanti – a non-drinker, a
non-gambler, a man who does not hit his wife or children and a hard worker.
Chhork’s only ‘crime’ is that he was born into poverty and, without an
education, without being able to read or write, it is an uphill battle for him
to make a living. This makes him, and the many men like him in Cambodia, vulnerable
to the kind of criminal activity your church engages in. Who can Chhork turn
to? Who can any parent in Cambodia whose children have been stolen by your
church (and by other similarly unscrupulous AusAID approved NGOs) turn to in
their quest for justice? Nowhere. To no-one – unless they happen to chance upon
someone like myself who is prepared to act as an advocate for them. Even then,
as my experience of the last five years makes clear, they have a snowflake’s
chance in hell of getting their children returned to them. They cannot compete
with the Global Development Group’s annual $25 million war chest, they cannot
compete with the total lack of interest on the part of Australia’s Ambassador
to Cambodia, they cannot compete with ACFID’s apathy – a regulatory body whose
main function is to create the illusion of due process in ‘investigating’
complaints. In reality, ACFID, in refusing to ask Citipointe or GDG for copies
of legal documents, sets up terms of reference that guarantee no finding can be
found against either Citipointe or GDG. This is unsurprising given Marc
Purcell’s friendship with Geoff Armstrong; given that Geoff Armstrong is a
member of Citipointe church and believes that tax-deductible Australian charity
dollars are well spent removing children from the homes of their materially
poor parents and forcing them to become Pentecostal Christians.
Citipointe, GDG, AusAID and ACFID
are all part of a system that is corrupt and that should be the subject of the
kind of investigation that ICAC in NSW is currently conducting. And I hope,
when CHANTI’S WORLD is completed and screened, that the questions it raises my
induce the Hon Julie Bishop to order a thorough and independent investigation
into the way in which foreign aid, channeled through unscrupulous NGOs such as
Citipointe’s ‘SHE Rescue Home’ and the GDG, are not only in breach of AusAID
rules, in breach of the laws of the countries they work in but are behaving in
ways that would, in Australia, see their senior management in court facing serious
charges relating to the abduction, illegal removal, kidnapping etc of the
children of vulnerable parents.
I hope that Geoff Armstrong and
the GDG board, to whom I am copying this letter, will find plenty in it to
commence legal proceedings against me in Australia. They will find ample
evidence, but no legal proceedings will commence because GDG has no desire, any
more than Citipointe does, to have a spotlight shone on the NGO’s activities
overseas.
With such powerful allies in
AusAID, ACFID etc, Citipointe will continue to win battle after battle in the
ongoing efforts made by Chanti and Chhork (with my assistance) to get their
daughters back. When CHANTI’S WORLD (both the film and the book) are released,
however, it will become apparent that your corrupt church has lost the war.
best
wishes
James
Ricketson
cc
The Hon Julie Bishop, Minister for Foreign Affairs.
Dr
Sue-Anne Wallace, Chair, and members of the Australian Council for
International Development, Code of Conduct Committee.
The
Global Development Group
No comments:
Post a Comment