A new tactic to get Citipointe to release the two girls the church stole from their materially poor parents more than five years ago.

Leigh Ramsay

322 Wecker Road

Carindale

QLD 4152                                                                                          

7^th Sept. 2013

Dear Leigh

Following on from my letter to you of 28^th August. As with all my letters, you have ignored it, secure in the knowledge that no-one that will hold you or your church accountable for the illegal removal of Rosa and Chita in mid 2008. You are free to act as you please in Cambodia – with the same impunity enjoyed by corrupt Cambodian politicians and their political and business cronies.

After five years of asking and receiving no answers, only threats, there is clearly no point in asking you questions of any kind in relation to Citipointe’s removal of Rosa and Chita from their family.

There is likewise no point in asking the Ministry of Social Affairs why this illegal removal took place. Or why, more than five years later, Citipointe continues to hold Rosa and Chita against the express wishes  of their parents - despite Chanti and Chhork’s being home and land owners and living off the proceeds of Chhork’s work as a tuk tuk driver.

There is clearly no point in suggesting to the Phnom Penh Post that it might ask a few of the questions outlined in my two open letters to it (and the Cambodia Daily) in relation to the removal of Rosa and Chita in mid-2008:

http://citipointechurch.blogspot.com/

Citipointe has successfully intimidated the Phnom Penh Post in much the same way that your church sought to intimidate me into silence in 2010 with its threat to sue me for defamation; in much the same way that Pastor Mulheran sought to intimidate me into silence with his scarcely veiled threats (in writing) to have me arrested, jailed and banned from visiting Cambodia again.

In short, there is clearly no way that Chanti and Chhork can get their daughters returned to them in accordance with Cambodian law. NGOs such at Citipointe can steal the children of poor Cambodian parents with impunity as the English language newspapers and the NGO community buries their heads in the sand and pretends that such things do not happens.

I mentioned in a recent letter that I would soon be left with no choice but to resort to Plan B. I have changed my mind on this as I have a visceral dislike of foot-in-the-door TV journalism. However, given Citipointe’s determination to keep Rosa and Chita until they are 18 and the impossibility of getting the Cambodian media or the NGO interested in your kidnapping of the girls, it is a tactic worth trying. Here is how it will work:

At some point in the not too distant future I will stand in the street outside Citipointe church in Brisbane, on publicly owned property (ie, not trespassing), handing out fliers to your parishioners as they come out of church. On one side of the flier will be a colour photograph of Rosa, Chita and their mother, Chanti, with the word STOLEN? prominently displayed. On the other side of the flier will be an invitation to any members of Citipointe church interested in finding out more to visit my Citipointe blog and acquaint themselves with the facts. There will also be a list of questions that I have been asking the church for more than five years and to which I have received no answers. Perhaps some brave Citipointe parishioners will ask you and Pastor Mulheran some of these questions and not be satisfied with whatever spin you might offer up in defense of the church’s indefensible actions in Cambodia.

Given that I will be openly accusing Citipointe of illegally removing Rosa and Chita from their parents in 2008 (and God knows how many other girls from their poor parents) Citipointe will be confronted with two options: (1) Pretend that my handing out of fliers has not occurred or (2) Sue me for defamation.

I hope that your church chooses option (2) so that Citipointe’s illegal removal of Rosa and Chita receives a public airing in Australia and results in your church being forced, by the court in which the defamation proceedings are being heard, to produce evidence that it removed the girls from their parents in accordance with Cambodian law. As you know, any court case in Australia will open up a Pandora’s box of questions that you will not be able to answer and Citipointe will be exposed as engaging in the ‘stealing’ of Cambodian children from their poor parents in a way not dissimilar to the way in which Aboriginal children were ‘stolen’ from their parents last century.

Perhaps, once commenced legal proceedings have commenced, the Phnom Penh Post will pluck up the courage to report in it and the questions the case raises not just about Citipointe’s ‘She Rescue Home’ but about ‘orphanages’ generally and the reason why Cambodia is bucking the international trend of closing them down for both humanitarian and economic reasons.