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
How could both of these two statements be the truth:
ReplyDeleteAPLE has not been to see Sekun.
Th APLE lawyer has told Sekun not to talk to the media because 'its over'