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| James, Kevin and Srey Ka |
Chanti and Chhork tell me
that a month or so ago LICADHO spoke with their local Prey Veng Village Chief
(Chhork’s father) and Commune chief (Chhork’s uncle); that both had told
LICADHO, whilst the family was poor, Chanti and Chhork could provide a good home
for Rosa and Chita.
If nothing has been lost in
translation here, why are Rosa and Chita still in the care of Citipointe
church? (That Chhork’s father and uncle hold significant positions in the
community should give some indication of the kind of family network that has
been available to Chanti and Chhork this past five years – a family network
that Citipointe has never once attempted to tap into. Likewise, Citipointe has
never met nor made any attempt to meet and talk with either Chanti and Chhork’s
Village of Commune Chiefs! Indeed, Citipointe did not bother to consult with
them, as is customary, before taking Rosa and Chita into care in 2008. The
problem here is not just Citipointe’s contempt for Cambodian law and natural
justice but that there is no-one, no body, in a position to force the church to
be transparent, accountable and to obey the law.
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| Chhork and Poppy, James, Kevin and Srey K |
Chanti and Chhork also tell
me that a meeting had been held a few weeks ago at which staff from LICADHO and
Citipointe church were present. Chanti and Chhork were not invited to attend
the meeting to discuss their own daughters. Nor was I invited, despite my being
Chanti’s legally appointed Advocate – as both Citipointe and LICADHO are aware.
If such a meeting occurred why was I neither informed nor invited? More
importantly, why should LICADHO and Citipointe be discussing the future of Rosa
and Chita without their parents being present? They are not criminals, they
have done nothing wrong, there has never been any suggestion that they have
ever done anything to harm their children or that they would ever do so. I
expect this form of paternalism from Citipointe, as the church acts as if it
owns Rosa and Chita, but for LICADHO not to invite the parents to such an
important meeting is totally inappropriate behavior for a human rights NGO.
I suspect that the reason why neither
Chanti and Chhork nor myself were invited (at least as far as Citipoint is
concerned) is that if we were present it would be very hard for Citipointe to
tell the sorts of lies the church has told this past five years to justify its
actions. Citipointe knows that I have evidence of its lies and the last thing
the church would want is for me to produce it in a meeting such as the one that
seems to have occurred. (The Ministry of the Interior’s ‘Anti Human
Trafficking and Juvenile Protection Department’ refused to allow me to present
to it the evidence I had of Rosa and Chita’s illegal removal.)
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| Kevin, Chanti and Srey Ka |
It
is abundantly clearly that neither LICADHO, SISHA is in a position to help
Chanti and Chhork get their children back, regardless of their best intentions.
I do not doubt that both NGOs wish to assist but the simple truth, in Cambodia
in 2013, is that both are powerless to do anything. They simply cannot compete
with whatever forces are in play here that enable Citipointe to effectively
kidnap the children of poor Cambodian parents and keep them for as long as they
please. I suspect that it will only be when the entire NGO community in
Cambodia says “Enough is enough” and begins to publicly disassociate itself
from unscrupulous NGOs that such NGOs will be under pressure to either leaver
Cambodia or to reform their practices such that they become accountable for
their actions.
On the surface it might
appear that I have wasted my time this past five years trying to get Rosa and
Chita returned to their family through any and every avenue open to me. The one
avenue I did not explore was finding the right person to bribe to see to it
that the family was re-united. On several occasions Chanti told me that the
police wanted to speak with me, that they wanted money from me. I refused each
time and never did find out which police she was referring to. With the wisdom
of hindsight it might have been preferable if I had paid whatever bribe needed
to be paid all of those years ago. It certainly would have saved a lot of time
and energy. And, more importantly, a lot of heartache for Chanti and Chhork.
Chanti and Chhork’s problems
this past six or so weeks, without a tuk tuk, have been confounded by both the
weather (floods) and Chanti’s mother, Vanna. I had sent Chanti and Chhork money
from Australia to get their tuk tuk back. Chanti’s mother, Vanna, asked Chanti
to give her the money. Chanti did so. When I asked Chanti why she replied, “My
mother gave me my life, I cannot say no.” Vanna then gave the money to her own
mother – no doubt with the same justification in mind: “She gave me my life,
how can I say no?” This is not the first time that such a problem has arisen
and perhaps will not be the last – though I have made any further monetary help
for the family conditional on none of the money being given to Vanna –
regardless of any entreaties she may make to Chanti.
 |
| Chanti, Poppy and Srey Ka |
On closer investigation this
past week I discovered that the debt Chanti owes to the moneylender, the debt
that resulted in the money lender stealing the family tuk tuk, dates back more
than a decade. Most of the debt is interest accrued over 10 or so years. I
again suggested to Chanti that we go to the police and report what amounts to theft.
She shook her head and was quite adamant that we should not as the police are
corrupt. Indeed, much of the debt Chanti
had built up all those years ago was the result of paying bribes to the police
when she was selling snacks and drinks in a stall down by the river.
Technically, running such a stall was illegal even 10 years ago, but all of the
stall holders paid the police not to arrest them. And if the stall holders
could not afford to pay the bribes they had to borrow money.
The loss of the family tuk
tuk – the family’s main source of income
- pitched Chanti into deep despair. On top of this, the family home and
the surroundings have been under water during the recent floods and two of her
children have been ill. These problems have been exacerbated by the lack of a
toilet. And where has Citipointe been during all this? Absent, as usual. As
always. The church has done nothing this past five years to help Chanti and her
family and never will. Doing nothing to alleviate Chanti’s poverty is one way
the church can ensure that it can retain custody of Rosa and Chita until they
are 18. That this state of affairs is tolerated by the NGO community is a sorry
state of affairs.
I have bought Chanti and Chhork
another tuk tuk so at least one of their problems has been resolved. Chhork is now able to
earn rough $30 a week with the tuk tuk – an income supplemented by Chanti’s chickens,
pigs and vegetables. Theirs is still a poor family but no poorer than the
majority of Cambodian families. And, unlike most Cambodian families, this one
has a safety net if disaster strikes – namely myself.
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| Kevin |
Neither
the clear evidence of Rosa and Chita’s illegal removal five years ago nor
Chanti and Chhork’s clear ability to take care of their daughters in 2013 is
sufficient to result in their return to the family home. Nor are these
demonstrably true facts sufficient to induce other NGOs or the Cambodian
English language media to speak out or, at the very least, to ask questions of
Citipointe in a public forum. These questions apply not only to Citipointe, of
course, but to all those NGOs that play fast and loose with the truth in order to boost their sponsorship and donor
earnings; all those NGOs that, even with the best of intentions, are exploiting
poor Cambodian families in pursuit of their own agendas.
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| James |
When I complete CHANTI’S
WORLD, the very first monies I earn from the film, will go to engaging lawyers
in both Australia and Cambodia to sue Citipointe for the church’s illegal
removal of Rosa and Chita back in mid 2008. In the event that I am successful,
through either court, in exposing Citipointe’s clear breaches of both Cambodian
and Australian law of Rosa and Chita in 2008, in the event that Rosa and Chita
are returned to the care of their parents, Citipointe will simply have to find
two other young girls from an impoverished family to ‘rescue’ and then exploit
to raise money for the church. And all this will happen with the tacit approval
of an NGO community that chooses to remain silent on the human rights abuses
that it knows to occur within it.
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| Kevin |
I can only hope that one day
the Cambodian people will way, “Enough, we are no longer prepared to have our
children used by foreign NGOs to raise money. If you wish to help us, help our poor
families, help our struggling communities, do not take our children away from us and then make
it seem as if you are doing us a huge favour.”
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| James |
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