phuketrichard wrote: ↑Fri Nov 24, 2017 5:24 pm he made some high up enemies

frank lee bent wrote: ↑Fri Nov 24, 2017 5:46 pm yeah- a bit of an example for foreigners who would like to insert themselves into local politics

No details of the allegations against Ricketson have been made public.

James Ricketson's only crime was kindness, now he might die in jail Elizabeth Farrelly


Christmas in Cambodia. It sounds like a novel, and the story does have rather a Shakespearean fall. But if Christmas in Phnom Penh's notorious Prey Sar prison is half as bad as the other 180-odd nights my friend James Ricketson has spent there, it's a Christmas you wouldn't wish on Scrooge himself.

Cell 26 houses 27 men. It's small – so small they can't all lie down at once – and dark, the TV being its only source of light. One man, larger than the others, sits slightly apart, writing furiously in the small patch of yellow light that shafts in from the street. He hunches, having been deprived of his glasses, and constantly shifts the notebook since the light patch is smaller than the page.

The man, James, is 68 years old. He stops now and then to scratch. Scabies. Body lice. Pustules that spread and pop, forming craters that take weeks to heal. His stomach and back, he writes, feel "like a cheese grater". Everyone has skin conditions here. Washing is limited to two daily ladles of water each. Only gruel is supplied; fresh air and fresh food must be bought. The stench is appalling, from a sewer in the street and an open squat toilet in the corner.

You can bribe your way to better accommodation, and maybe a better outcome, but it's risky. Success is uncertain and running out of money can see you charged with bribery by the very people extorting it. There's no privacy, no bedding, and the men must sleep in turns, petty thieves and paedophiles sardined beside those like James, jailed for bearing witness.

Maybe it sounds a little Christ-like. Maybe that's apt. Christmas should celebrate truth; the critical courage of speaking truth to power, the lives of truth's martyrs. Martin Luther King. Martin Luther. Thomas More. Theirs should be past glories. But truth is once again a dangerous commitment. As Peter Greste​ noted this week, 262 journalists across the world are currently imprisoned, mostly for political reasons.


In 2017, says the London-based International News Safety Institute, 68 journalists were killed, including anti-corruption writers in Mexico, Malta and Colombia, but of the perpetrators only two face legal action.

In Cambodia opposition members have been jailed, threatened or forced into exile. Two MPs, says Human Rights Watch, were dragged from their cars outside parliament and beaten unconscious by Prime Minister HE's bodyguards.

In September opposition leader Kem Sokha​ was arrested for treason. The Cambodia Daily, forced to close, used its final edition to decry the government's "outright dictatorship". And two ex-Radio Free Asia reporters, Oun Chhin​ and Yeang Socheameta​, were charged with "espionage", carrying a maximum 15-year prison sentence.

Fear is everywhere. Yet Australia persists in sweet-talking Cambodia, under our $55 million deal to resettle Manus and Nauru refugees there. The deal's a lemon since, of the seven refugees who've agreed to go to Cambodia, at least four have left citing discrimination, violence and oppression.

It's also morally dodgy. Even in 2014, when Cambodia still seemed relatively democratic, the UN called this deal a "a worrying departure from international norms", arguing that traumatised people should not be shuffled about nor sent exclusively to developing countries. Yet even now, as rights groups demand sanctions and the Geneva-based International Commission of Jurists accuses HE's government of "weaponising" the law to silence dissent, the Turnbull government toasts this "democracy-crushing regime" with champagne.

Like the UN, James has been openly critical of this attempt to toss refugees into Cambodia's flames. It's not why he has spent the last six months in Prey Sar, but it's a factor.

The story goes like this. Back in 1987 James was a divorced filmmaker with a young son, Jesse. Researching a documentary on Australia's street kids he met Roxanne, a smart but self-destructive young woman with an abusive background. She was threatened with incarceration in Mulawa women's prison. James, always impulsive, volunteered as her "community placement". So hungry for love was she that within days she was calling him dad and signing herself, "love, your daughter, Roxanne." At 17, Rox had adopted him. Now, she's a grandmother, working day and night with Jesse and other family members for James' release.

One thing led to another. A newspaper story on Phnom Penh's street kids started James on a new documentary, which became the ABC's Sleeping with Cambodia, 1997. In Phnom Penh for the first time, James met Chanti, a sweet-faced 8-year-old living with her mother on the streets. He fell for the country, and the family.

Twenty years on, with James' ongoing help, Chanti​ has a husband, Chhork​, and seven children (the fourth named Mister James in honour). James has paid for food and schooling (footage shows the kids trooping off in uniform from their poor rural village). He bought Chhork a tuk-tuk, yielding a $4-a-day income when the family could not pay police bribes to run their riverside snack stall. And he fought for the return of Chanti's two oldest children, Rosa and Cheata, from the Brisbane-based evangelical Citipointe Church.

This fight, eventually successful, became part of the larger story about Cambodia's orphanages, although Citipointe said it did not run an orphanage but that the government classified its facility as a support of care shelter and that returning children to their families was a government decision.

This fight made James powerful enemies.

We may never know the real reason why, last June, James was arrested for using an unlicensed drone to film a peaceful opposition rally in Phnom Penh. Once he was in custody, the drone was quickly forgotten. James was accused of espionage, although there's still no formal charge.

But espionage? That's absurd. James is no spy. Hopelessly kind, yes. Disastrously, self-sacrificingly generous. Suffer the little children, absolutely.

Six-two and always thin, James has lost 10 kilograms or more. His ankles swell. His mood swings. We fear he'll die in this hell-hole. Yet every new Bali drug smuggler seems to excite more compassion and receive more help than citizen James, whose crimes are kindness, decency and truth.

He hunches, having been deprived of his glasses

Roxanne Holmes Manly ,Dec 23 2017 at 11:43am

I am James daughter I cannot begin to comprehend how the Bishop / Turnbull government have blatantly abandoned James knowing his arrest was politically motivated and NOT the result of a crime. JULIE BISHOP why? are you remaining silent ?? Whilst Trade deals , refugee deals are economically important , so is the life of an inncocent Australian possibly comdeed to a death sentence , because your government is refusing and failing in its role to uphold the international laws on the protection of citizens. JULIE BISHOP AND MR TURNBULL when are you going to stop the secrecy and step in and bring James Ricketson home.
You have spent a fortune bringing / extradiating criminals back to Australia yet a journalist / filmmaker who’s only crime has been to bear witness and make a huge difference in the lives of others is left to rot in Prey Sar Prison. friends family member s and fellow journalists await your public response .
Bring James Ricketson Home.
Roxanne Holmes

We may never know the real reason why, last June, James was arrested for using an unlicensed drone to film a peaceful opposition rally in Phnom Penh. Once he was in custody, the drone was quickly forgotten. James was accused of espionage, although there's still no formal charge.