Citipointe turns a blind eye to Chanti's illness- yet again!

Leigh Ramsay

322 Wecker Road

Carindale

QLD 4152

6^th Feb 2013

Dear Leigh

I have arrived in Phnom Penh to find Chanti sick and in need of hospitalization.  As you know, Chanti is 8 months pregnant. Her white blood cells are, I discovered in my first 24 hours in Phnom Penh, dangerously low as a result of a respiratory infection. The precise nature of the infection will not be known until a second round of blood tests have been done. What we do know at present is that there is a build up of fluid in her body that, if it is not dealt with, could place Chanti’s baby's life at risk. The cost of the hospital will be $45 a day – a cost that I will, yet again, quite happily meet.

The prime issue here is not so much that Citipointe is mean-spirited in offering no help at all to any other members of Chanti’s family (though this is the case) but that it never occurs to you or your staff to even make enquiries as to the health of Chanti’s family. It would have been blindingly obvious to the Citipopinte staff who visited Chanti’s home just a few days ago that she had a fever, was not well and needed to see a doctor she could ill afford.  Did they pas this information on to you? A couple of years ago it was a tumour on Chanti’s wrist that was large enough that your staff could not have failed to notice it. It cost only $60 to have the tumour removed – a cost that Citipointe would not meet. I did. Have your staff been instructed NOT to make enquiries about the health of Chanti and her family? Are there any circumstances under which your church might reach out and help Chyanti and her family? The potential death of her unborn child, for instance! What sort of a Christian are you, Leigh?

Your total disregard for the well-being of Chanti herself, and for the rest of her family, no longer astounds me. What does astound me is that your fellow Christian NGOs, under the umbrella of Chab Dai, turn a blind eye to your exploitation of the girls in your care – in contravention of both Cambodian and Australian law and the basic precepts of Christianity. It astounds me also that the government of Cambodia allows an NGO such as Citipointe to operate in this country – an NGO that engages in (at least) two varieties of human rights abuse – of the children themselves and of their parents.

Poverty tourism, also known as orphan-tourism is the latest in a long line of human rights abuses visited upon the poor Cambodian people. This involves subjecting young girls like Rosa and Chita to the gaze (and camera lenses) of  ‘well-meaning’ tourists who believe they can demonstrate to others and themselves what ‘good’ and ‘caring’ people they are visiting an orphanage, working in the kitchen and otherwise hanging out with the children of poor parents. The bulk of these children are not orphans at all, of course. They have families.  Poor families. This is a scam and should end – both in the case of genuine orphans and those who, like Rosa and Chita, have effectively been ‘stolen’ from their poor parents.

In the case of Citipointe there is another level to this ‘poverty-tourism’ scam – namely presenting girls like Rosa and Chita as having been rescued from the sex trade. This is a bald-faced lie. Do you ever tell your Citipointe ‘poverty tourists’ that Rosa and Srey Mal have a mother and a father, a grandmother, siblings, a home and a dad who earns enough money at a tuk tuk driver to support the whole family? Do you tell your ‘poverty-tourists’  that you have refused Chanti’s repeated requersts to have her daughters returned to her care?  Do you tell your ‘poverty tourists’ of the enormous distress it causes Chanti being able to see her daughters for only a few hours each month? Do you tell your ‘poverty tourists’ that the ‘She’ refuge is much less concerned with the welfare of the families the church claims to be reintegrating the children in its care back into than in exploiting girls like Rosa and Chita to raise money for the church?

Turning children into tourist attractions would not be tolerated in Australia, as you know. Nor would the stealing of the daughters of poor parents by tricking them into signing worthless contracts that they could not read and did not understand. In Australia you would be up on charges of kidnapping for what you have done – holding Rosa and Chita for 15 months against the express wishes of their mother and father.

There is another new development in this ongoing saga but I will leave off telling you of it until Chanti has been returned to health – with no thanks at all to yourself or Citipointe church. You are the kind of Christian, Leigh, that gives Christianity a bad name.

best wishes

James Ricketson