Baby Poppy, Chanti
and her husband Chhork, have waited in Phnom Penh for 2 weeks to speak
with a representative of the Global Development Group (GDG) - the Australian
based NGO that delivers tax-deductible funding to Citipointe church's 'SHE
Rescue Home' - the Australian based NGO that illegally removed Chanti's two
eldest daughters from her care in 2008. GDG refuses to speak with the parents
of Rosa and Chita or to look at any evidence in support of the illegality of
Citipointe's actions
 |
| Poppy and Chanti March 2014 |
 |
| Poppy and Chhork, March 2014 |
James Ricketson
Phnom Penh
Mr
Phou Pov Sun
Investigating
Judge
Phnom
Penh Municipal Court
Criminal
Case number 3730
5th
March 2014
Dear
Mr Phou Pov Sun
In relation to the Court Order
presented to me on 28th Feb, I wish to make the following
observations:
- I do not speak or read Khmer
- The translation I had made of
the 26th Feb Court Order did not clarify (a) the organization that had
laid the charges or (b) the precise nature of the charges.
I have now received 3 different
interpretations of what the court document asserts:
(1) I am being charged with being
a prostitute
(2) I am being charged with
posting pornography on my blog
(3) I am being charged with
hindering Citipointe church in its attempt to help prostitutes.
Given that both (1) and (2) are
demonstrably untrue, I will concentrate on (3), bearing in mind that I must
rely on information presented to me a journalist; not by the court.
 |
| Rosa at home with her mum, Chanti, and grandmother, Vanna, six months before being 'rescued' by Citipointe church |
Is Citipointe suggesting that Yem
Chanty’s daughters, Rosa and Chita, were prostitutes in in 2008 when the church
removed them from the care of their family? Rosa was aged six at the time;
Chita aged three.
If 6 year old Rosa and 3 year old
Chita were prostitutes in 2008, why were no charges brought against their
parents at the time? Why has there never been, in any correspondence between
myself and the church this past five years, any suggestion that Rosa and Chita
were prostitutes in 2008 or at any other time?
If Rosa and Chita were not
prostitutes then Citipointe’s accusation has no merit, unless the church is referring
to my having hindered the ‘SHE Rescue Home’ in its attempts to help other
prostitutes in its care.
Has Citipointe presented the
Phnom Penh Municipal Court with any evidence in support of the proposition that
that I have ‘hindered’ the church in its attempts to help these prostitutes? If
so, on what dates did such ‘hindering’ occur? And in what way was I
‘hindering’?
If you, as Judge, have no
evidence before you that Rosa and Chita were prostitutes in 2008, or that I have ‘hindered’ Citipointe in its
attempts to help prostitutes in the church’s care, Citipointe has engaged in
vexatious litigation and should be charged with defamation.
 |
| Chanti teaching Rosa to count in English |
Citipointe’s accusation is in
line with a not-so-thinly veiled threat issued to me in a letter by Pastor
Brian Mulheran on 21st Feb 2013
“Using
the law is the last thing that we want to see happen, because for you to be
convicted of a crime and serve a sentence may mean that you will never have the
opportunity to re-enter Cambodia again.”
Citipointe‘s accusation in Feb
2014 is the church’s attempt to intimidate me into ceasing my advocacy on
behalf of Yem Chanthy and Both Chhork. I will not be intimidated and will quite
happily go to jail if this is what is required to bring attention to the gross
miscarriage of justice that has occurred as a result of Citipointe’s illegal
removal of Rosa and Chita in 2008.
I have attached a copy of the ‘contract’
that Citipointe church asked Yem Chanthy to sign on 31st July 2008.
Is this, in the opinion of the
court, a legal document? Does this 31st July 2008 document give
Citipointe church the right to remove Rosa and Chita from their family and
detain them in an institution for five years against the wishes of their
parents?
 |
| Rosa in school before her 'rescue' |
Given that Yem Chanthy and Both
Chhork have repeatedly asked for their daughters to be returned to their care
this past five years, on the basis of what legal document has the church been
able to detain Rosa and Chita since 2008? The church claims that its legal
right resides in a memorandum of understanding with the Ministry of Social
Affairs. If this is so, natural justice demands that the parents be provided
with a copy of this memorandum; that I, as their legally appointed advocate, also
be provided with a copy of it. We have not been, despite having asked for
copies for five years now.
 |
| Step # 1 in the 'rescue' of girls from their families to be transformed into 'victims of human trafficking' - the singalong and prayer meeting down by the river. Chita in the centre, Rosa behind her right shoulder. |
If, on 11th August
2008, Citipointe had entered into no legally binding contract with either
Chanti or Chhork (the parents) or with the Ministry of Social Affairs giving
the church the right to detain Rosa and Chita against the wishes of their
parents, Pastor Leigh Ramsey, Ms Rebecca Brewer and Ms Helen Shields are guilty
of ‘unlawful removal’ in accordance with Article 8 of Cambodia’s 2008 Law on Suppression of Human
Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation is quite clear:
Definition of Unlawful
Removal
The act of unlawful removal
in this law shall mean to:
1) remove a person from his/her
current place of residence to a place under the actor’s or a third
person’s 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, take a minor or a person under general
custody or curatorship or legal custody away from the legal custody of the
parents, care taker or guardian.
 |
| Step # 2 - get the girls about to be 'rescued' , the daughters of Buddhist parents, to pray to a Christian God. |
I will not be attending any interview
with any police until such time as I am provided with (a) a copy of any and all
documents relating to the possibility that Rosa and Chita, at ages 6 and 3 in
2008, were prostitutes; (b) evidence that
I have ‘hindered’ Citipoine in its efforts to help prostitutes this past five
years; (c) evidence, in the form of contracts and/legally binding agreements, that
Citipointe church had a legal right to remove the girls from their family in
2008 and (d) that Citipointe has had a legal right to detain the girls and
refuse them regular and appropriate access to their family this past five
years.
Whilst this may not, strictly
speaking, be a legal question, does the Court believe that it is appropriate
for expatriate NGOs to force the children of Buddihist parents to adopt the
Christian faith, as happens with Citipointe church and with many other Christian NGOs?
 |
| Step # 3 - the reward! Food parcels handed out to all the kids, though it is only the girls that Citipointe intends to 'rescue' |
Why do the Cambodian government,
the Cambodian courts, allow foreigners to steal Cambodian children from
Cambodian families? Why are these NGOs not assisting the materially poor
families of these girls rather than removing them and forcing them to become
Christians? If you believe that NGOs have this right, if you believe such
behaviour to be appropriate on the part of NGOs such as Citipointe’s ‘SHE Rescue Home’ you can issue a warrant for
my arrest for fighting for the right of Yem Chanthy and Both Chhork to bring up
their own daughters. Or you could decide, in your deliberations and looking at
the evidence, that Rosa and Chita would be better off growing up within family
that loves them, within the family they love, than to be growing up within an
institution in which they are forced to abandon their Buddhist religion and be indoctrinated
into the Christian faith.
 |
| Food for everyone who has sat through the singalong and prayer meeting |
Do you, Mr Phou Sun, wish to
endorse the behavior of those NGOs in Cambodia, of which Citipointe’s ‘SHE
Rescue Home’ is but one, who believe that the children of materially poor
Cambodians are better off growing up in institutions run by foreigners than
within their own families; in institutions run by rich Christians who wish to
win souls for Jesus Christ and in the process alienate Cambodian children from
their mothers and fathers, their brothers and sisters, their uncles and aunts, their
extended family, their community, their
religion and the traditions of a proud Cambodian culture.
This is what the
Khmer Rouge set out to achieve in 1975. Citipoine church, and its paymaster,
the Australian based Global Development Group, are the Khmer Rouge of 2014 –
with intentions as noble but as misguided as Pol Pot’s.
 |
| Step # 4 - food for the parents also to soften them up for the offer about to be made to them to provide assistance to their families |
“The pathway to hell is paved with good
intentions.”
I can find no Khmer equivalent
for this aphorism but there are two sayings of Gautama Buddha that are relevant
here:
"What's
done to the children is done to society."
"He
who wrongs the innocent must bear the fruit of his act, like dust flung against
the wind."
I await my arrest this coming
weekend with a clear conscience.
best wishes
James Ricketson
 |
| Cambodia, 2008. Rosa, a few months after she was illegally removed from her family, along with her sister, Chita, by Brisbane-based Citipointe church. Rosa is holding a silver crucifix out for the church photographer. Church staff then gave this photo to her Buddhist parents - Chanti and Chhork. 5 years later the church retains custody of Rosa and Chita despite repeated requests from their parents that they be returned to the family. Citipointe is funded by Australian NGO, the Global Development Group |
Following is the text of the
letter I wrote to Judge Phou Pov Sun – his name, it seems, open to various
spellings:
Investigating
Judge
Pu Povsun
3rd
floor
Phnom Penh
Municipal Court
4th
March 2014
Dear Pu Povsun
On 24th
Feb 2014, Mr Geoff Armstrong, Executive Director of the Global Development
Group wrote a letter to me in which he informed me that I had been charged with
‘hindering’ Citipointe church.
I knew nothing
about these charges at the time because your court had not charged me yet.
Four days later,
on 28th Feb, I was provided
with a document from the court, dated 26th Feb, to let me know that
I had been charged.
Whilst it was not
easy to understand what I had been charged with, it eventually became apparent
that the charge was ‘hindering’ Citipoine church in its attempt to ‘help
prostitutes’.
I am interested
to know and understand how Mr Geoff Armstrong was able to know about my being
charged on 24th Feb - two days before the court document was
prepared (26th Feb) and four days before it was delivered to me?
I am interested
to know also if there is any suggestion that the ‘prostitutes’ I have supposedly been ‘hindering’ Citipopinte
church in helping, are Rosa and Chita – who were, respectively, 6 and 3 years
old at the time they were removed from their family by Citipointe church in
2008.
yours sincerely
James Ricketson
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