Tuesday, December 2, 2014

# 55 Foreign Secretary Phillip Hammond remains silent as David Fletcher enters the last week of his life?


James Ricketson
316 Whale Beach Road
Palm Beach 2108
Sydney, Australia

Mr Phillip Hammond
Foreign Secretary
Parliamentary House of Commons
London SW1A                                                                                   

2nd  Dec. 2014

Dear Mr Hammond

Needless to say, I have no expectation that you or anyone else within the FCO will respond in any way to this letter. I take this as a given. Your spin doctors will, no doubt, have advised you that the best thing you can do with a blogger/filmmaker such as myself is ignore him. David Fletcher will die, no-one will mourn his loss and no journalist will enquire further as to why the FCO not only abandoned him but played an integral role in his arrest and incarceration for a crime he could not possibly have committed – unless, that is, you believer that a woman’s hymen can grown back.

Today, a comment appeared in my blog inbox. It read:

“His death is his own choice, to use it to try to pressure anyone into action is infantile at best. He has played this bullshit card of starving himself/killing himself before.”

My response to this was:

“If you had bothered to read David Fletcher's own words, and my words echoing his, you would know that he has never shied away from the fact that it is his choice.”

I believe that David Fletcher is serious about his decision to end his life. I hope  that I am wrong, but even if it is a ploy on his part to obtain a fair trial, can you blame him? What would you do, Mr Hammond, if you were in his position? If you had been denied any trial for the crime for which you had been charged? What would you do if the person who had originally charged you had confessed that she had lied, that no crime had been committed, and yet you remained in jail? Might you feel inclined to clutch at straws? I think I would.

Since posting my latest blog entry, an open letter to the Phnom Penh Post, I received the following from a journalist friend:

We got Sekun (Yang Dany’s mother) on the phone yesterday. She said the following.

The Chinese husband is 27 years old.

The Chinese husband paid for the passport.

Dany is in China and working.

APLE has not been to see Sekun.

Th APLE lawyer has told Sekun not to talk to the media because 'its over'

Sekun will file a complaint against Mr James because she didn’t know he is a journalist.

‘Mr James’ is, of course, me!

I am more than a little bemused by the notion that Sekun (Yang Dany’s mum) says that she did not know that I was a journalist. In those small parts of the interviews I conducted with Yang Dany and her mother (published online) that I have edited there are several references to my being a journalist and there are several shots of one of the other journalists present making notes. There was never any pretense that we were not journalists. The proposition that Yang Dany and Kheang sekum did not know why we were interviewing them is nonsense.

None of this will matter, of course, if APLE decides to press charges against me, using Kheang Sekun  as their proxy. Phnom Penh Municipal Court judges who believe that a woman’s hymen can grown back, who can grant David Fletcher a trial on the 27th Oct and then refuse him one on 20th Nov are not going to be worried in the slightest by the facts. They will arrive at whatever verdict APLE pays them to arrive at. And if there is no law in Cambodia covering whatever crime I may be accuse don, this will prove no obstacle to the Phnom Penh Municipal Court judges. They will find some law to prosecute me under. Insurrection, perhaps! Bringing the Kingdom or Cambodian into disrepute! Defaming APLE!

This would be the stuff of high comedy were it not for the fact that these corrupt judges destroy the lives of Cambodians and expatriates alike; destroy whole communities by refusing to acknowledge their legal and human rights and then throw in jail those who have the temerity to complain that they have had their homes and land stolen.

This corrupt judiciary, the corrupt Cambodian government led by Hun Sen (a dictator, let’s be frank here!), is propped up by the same British government that has abandoned David Fletcher to his fate. It is a corrupt regime that is propped up also by an Australian government that will, shortly, abrogate  international law and the human rights of refugees who have landed on Australian shores by offloading them onto a Cambodian government that regularly steals the land and homes of its own citizens and sells its natural resources to whatever gangster, from whatever country, who is prepared to pay what is required by the Cambodian kleptocracy.

If there is any member of the corrupt and powerful elite exploiting Cambodia and the Cambodian people I have failed to offend and defame, my apologies for this omission.

In your refusal, Mr Hammond, to provide any assistance at all to Mr Fletcher, to insist on his right to a fair trial, you reveal yourself to be a man devoid of moral principles. A national disgrace!

best wishes


James Ricketson

1 comment:

  1. How could both of these two statements be the truth:

    APLE has not been to see Sekun.

    Th APLE lawyer has told Sekun not to talk to the media because 'its over'

    ReplyDelete