# 109 For Dr Kek Pung, President LICADHO re Hang Vibol, APLE & NGO’s relationship with the media

Hang Vibol, APLE & NGO’s relationship with the media

Dear Dr Pung

Consider the case of Hang Vibol from a human rights perspective. It is the human rights of the children involved that I am interested in here.

Hang Vibol is in jail. He has been refused bail. This suggests the evidence that the has sexually abused children, as presented to the courts by Action Pour les Enfants, is strong.

Based on the time line presented by APLE itself, Thierry Darnaudet and Samleang Siela believed they were in possession of strong evidence of Hang Vibol’s guilt back in July 2014.

Why  then did it take 8 months for APLE, in conjunction of MoSVY, to remove children from his care who were clearly, on the basis of APLE ‘evidence’ at risk?  

Surely, in any case in which there is suspicion that a man with children in his care is guilty of sexual abuse, he should be removed from his position until such time as a proper investigation takes place? Indeed, it would be appropriate for the man himself (Hang Vibol) to vacate his position until such time as the investigation was completed.

So, why did Hang Vibol not resign? Was it because no charges had been laid? Was it because he was not aware that he was under investigation? Or was it because, despite his knowing that he was under investigation, he felt no need to resign because he knew himself to be innocent?

Does LICADHO ask these kinds of questions of its partner Action Pour les Enfants?

If it transpires, when Hang Vibol’s case goes to trial,  that APLE alleges children were sexually abused by him between July 2014 and March 2015, APLE will have clearly failed in its duty of care to these children. Thierry Darnaudet and Samleang Siela, in conjunction with MoSVY, will have failed dismally to prevent sexual abuse from occurring that they were in a position to prevent; that they had a duty to prevent.

Samleang Siela goes to great lengths to pretend that Thierry Darnaudet has nothing to do with Actrion Pour les Enfants. This, of course, is nonsense. And LICADHO knows it to be nonsense. Does this lie on the part of Siela bother LOCADHO at all?

If, on the off chance,  LICADHO believes Siela, check out Darnaudet’s twitter account:

https://twitter.com/APLE_world

Given that LICADHO ‘partners’ with APLE, are you satisfied with the way in which APLE has carried out its investigation into Hang Vibol’s alleged sexual abuse of children? I am not asking for an opinion vis a vis Hang Vibol’s guilt or innocence but for an assessment of the professionalism APLE has brought to protecting children in this instance.

You will not, of course, respond in any way to this email because, when all is said and one, LICADHO is no more transparent and accountable than the vast majority of NGOs in Cambodia.

This brings me to the NGO law that has been on the books for some time and which it seems Hun Sen will now push to have enacted. NGOs will fight tooth and nail to prevent any law that requires transparency and accountability on their part seeing the light of day.

I wonder if an NGO law of the kind Hun Sen has in mind would be necessary if the NGO community had, many years ago, made some effort to monitor the activities of NGOs and to insist that all should be transparent and accountable? To use a recent example:

It is clear that Scott Neeson’s Cambodian Children’s Fund claims that it spends $4,000 per annum for each child that the NGO has in residential care. You know, Dr Pung, that this is nonsense. LICADHO knows that it is nonsense. The NGO community knows this to be nonsense and yet none of you utter a peep of protest. None of you will ask, in public:

“How is it, Scott, that you claim to be spending $4,000 per year on one child? One child with a family whose combined annual income is around a third of this amount? One child who shares a bed with 2 or 3 others in a dormitory?”

Scott is not alone, as you know, in exploiting the poverty of Cambodian families for financial gain. CCF may well be responsible for removing more children from their families than any other NGO (700+), but there are plenty of others running sham ‘orphanages’ for profit – as you know. Why does LICADHO not, as a human rights issue, name and shame these NGOs?

The term ‘Scambodia’ has been attached to the country for some years now because a Wild West mentality has prevailed. Any NGO that wished to put up a shingle could go into business – setting up fake orphanages, fake rescue centres (Citipointe church’s ‘SHE Rescue Home’, for example) and other such institutions designed to milk as many dollars as possible from donors and sponsors. The ‘NGO community’ has turned a blind eye to these scamming NGOs  – enabling them to exploit the poverty of most Cambodians and the good will of sponsors and donors.

Given the lack of action on the part of the NGO community it is hardly surprising that the government should wish to force NGOs to be more transparent and accountable. An NGO law is not the only force that NGOs must now push back against. There is also the media – no longer so easy to manipulate as it has been in the past.

Up until relatively recently, those employed by the ‘aid industry’, could behave pretty much as they chose and feel secure in the knowledge that they would not be exposed as inefficient, incompetent, ineffectual or downright fraudulent.

Times are changing, however. It is now possible for bloggers such as myself to challenge the status quo in a way that the mainstream media cannot. And, through Facebook and other social media, the recipients of aid can be both educated and become vocal advocates for themselves. The paternalistic neo-colonial model for the delivery of aid is breaking down. And it is time that it did.

An excellent article has been published recently in which a whole range of issues relating to aid have been canvassed. The title is instructive:

CORPORATE, PATRONISING AND OBSTRUCTIVE: WHAT JOURNALISTS THINK ABOUT NGOS.

http://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2015/feb/17/media-development-journalism-ngos-report-ibt

‘Obstructive’ is certainly a word I would use in relation to my own attempts to get answers to questions from NGOs (including LICADHO) this past few years.

An extract from THE AID INDUSTRY:

“An overview of recent articles in the press and programmes on radio and television suggests there is an appetite for stories that question aid policy and the work of NGOs. Certainly many of those interviewed for this briefing thought that there was more criticism and in most cases, they felt that this was probably overdue.

One of the most consistent and severe critics of NGOs and the aid sector generally is Ian Birrell, a freelance columnist and foreign correspondent who writes principally for the Daily Mail, but also several other newspapers including the Guardian, Observer,

Daily Telegraph and The Times. He clearly sets out his own position in an article written for the Daily Mail in November 2013 in which he criticizes the arrogance of the ever-growing global relief industry which wastes money on ill-conceived, extravagant and vainglorious projects and marginalizes local expertise.

In an interview for this briefing he attributed increased criticism of the aid sector to 4 main factors:

- the narrative of aid which has gone on for a long time but ultimately failed

- the growing sophistication of the academic argument against aid (see his review of William Easterly’s Tyranny of Experts in The Guardian)

- the digital age which has given a voice to the previously voiceless in the developing world;

- the emergence of the Chinese model in Africa which he suggests is having a more positive impact than aid.

He rejects the idea that criticism can easily
be dismissed as part of a Daily Mail agenda and believes that comments in the liberal press are also beginning to change.

When I write on these issues for the Guardian or the Independent, I’m increasingly noticing that the comments I get are much more supportive... The criticism used to come from people who didn’t like to give aid to foreigners. Now it’s coming from people who care, but realize the flaws in the old fashioned, simplistic model.”

In the case of Cambodia it seems to be less a matter of NGOs being defensive as being completely immune to any form of criticism; to see themselves as being above criticism. NGOs can ignore all criticism because, after all, who is going to hold any NGO in Cambodia to account? No-one.

What happens in any sphere of life, even in countries that enjoy the benefits of ‘civil society’, when institutions are not held to be sufficiently accountable? Corruption. And what happens when corruption is endemic and when the institutions that are either corrupt or turn a blind eye to the corruption of others in the same business? Regulation. Government regulation.

Hun Sen may have other reasons for wanting to bring in a tough NGO law but the NGO community can only blame itself for having done nothing this past decade to root out and expose  the ‘bad apples’ within the NGO community that bring the reputations of all NGOs into disrepute.

As I mentioned in a recent email to Chad Williams, editor of the Phnom Penh Post, one aspect of this new digital age we have entered, is that for better and for worse whatever is published on the internet stays on the internet and can be accessed by anyone interested - one, five and twenty years hence. In 20 years time if anyone ‘googles’ Dr Kek Pung this blog entry (amongst many others) will come up.

It is inevitable that the time will come when this period of Cambodian history will be carefully dissected by historians, sociologists and others. A name will probably be applied to the period that began with the 1995 ‘free and fair elections’ (‘Scambodia’ perhaps!) – a period that saw not just the exploitation of Cambodia by a corrupt kleptocracy (with the blessing of the international donor community) but the exploitation of Cambodia by NGOs using the lack of rule of law to milk tens of millions of dollars from sponsors and donors who believed that they were helping poor Cambodians.

History will record that LICADHO wrote thousands of reports during this time but had little impact in terms of protecting the human rights of Cambodians. The children who grew up during this era will have vivid memories of having seen their parents’ and grandparents’ homes and land stolen; of the country’s natural resources being stolen. Many will also have vivid memories of being effectively stolen from their families by NGOs to grow up in institutions.

These children, when they grow up, will have no reason to thank LICADHO but many reasons to feel angry that LICADHO did nothing to protect them from the human rights abuses practiced by the NGOs that broke up their families. This includes those children who may have been sexually abused by Hang Vibol between July 2014 and March 2015. And it includes all those children who were removed from their homes and families as a result of fraudulent charges brought by APLE against innocent men.

It should not be necessary to write this but I, like pretty much everyone, have nothing but contempt for men who sexually abuse children. I, like pretty much everyone else, believe that such men should be jailed for long periods of time. However, it is this very ‘hatred’ of pedophiles that enables NGOs like APLE to keep its corrupt business model functional and profitable. And, alas, APLE does so with the blessing of LICADHO, along with all others who provide APLE with their tacit  support – even if this is only turning a blind eye, a deaf ear and hurrying their heads in the sand.

best wishes

James Ricketson