Point of View

NGO, INGO moles

BY DR. SUSANTHA Goonatilake

THE war that the LTTE wanted to start in December 2004 (Chandrika's time not Mahinda's) till their plans were rudely interrupted by the tsunami is being thrust on us.

This was a couple of years after the Tokyo meet which demanded democracy and human rights from the LTTE (Ranil's time not Mahinda's). The LTTE had shunned from its beginnings the essentials of the so-called peace process.

The SLMM chief declares according to one published source that the LTTE attacks prove that they are not interested in peace talks.

Around the same time, however, an SLMM spokeswoman comes on international BBC (December 29, 2005) and blames both sides equally and refuses to see that the LTTE as the major culprit.

Illustrating the level of foreign interference in the country, this spokeswoman with a Nordic name was probably in her 20s.

And the BBC newsreader added words of bashing Sri Lanka and LTTE heads together to see them make sense! A half century after Independence, we have allowed us to be treated as a colony.

In this colonial connection are undemocratic NGO proxies living off foreign funds taking stands against Sri Lanka. The Tiger, we now painfully realise, had never changed its stripes except in the propaganda of such NGO groups.

The latter have helped form a defeatist attitude in the country especially through the unprincipled journalists they fund. At a time of imminent danger, it is time that we remind ourselves of these dangers within.

One of the NGO proxies Jehan Perera of the National Peace Council in an article NOTE CHANGES in the Daily Mirror of (December 29, 2005) lectures to the government, "the LTTE is ready and willing to go to war, but the Government... should not be willing to go to war. He adds "Government... [should not] escalate violence in the same way as militant organizations."

In addition, an outfit with ample foreign funds "The National Anti-War Front" (NAWF), calls upon the Government to invite the Norwegians.

Taking the LTTE line, they ask the Sri Lanka Government to take steps to prevent violations by "para-military groups." Para-military group is the LTTE codeword for their biggest thorn the Karuna faction.

At a time when Sri Lanka is being increasingly forced by the Tigers to stand up and be counted, it is opportune for us to recall who these international actors and their proxies are. They have often taken stands against Sri Lanka which should not be allowed in any self-respecting country.

And many of them are interconnected with each other. Let us begin with the so-called anti-war front. It is instructive to trace the human threads through them (the foreign financial threads would be equally instructive).

Kumar Rupesinghe started his entry into ethnic/minority politics when in the 1970s he founded in Sri Lanka the group called Janavegaya affiliated to the then ruling SLFP.

In their journal by the same name his views on Tamil federalism and separatism was analyzed in no uncertain terms. Rupesinghe's Janavegaya line: Tamil separatism was unjust and was fuelled by South Indian links.

His views changed, as later after the then government was defeated, he eventually became the director of London based International Alert IA.

IA was formed in the 1980s specifically targeted on Sri Lanka and to support the Tamil separatist cause. IA had a map with over half Sri Lanka as the future Tamil state.

These 'Tamil areas' included the central highlands as well as substantial sections of the South. This area of the future Tamil Eelam State demarcated by IA was much bigger than even the LTTE map and had 5/6th of Coast as LTTE territory.

IA under Rupesinghe was accused in the 1990s by the deposed President of Sierra Leone of staging a coup in his country in support of an LTTE type of cruel entity there.

Rupesinghe's IA soon faced a string of accusations that went up to the UN and the Organization of African Unity.

In parts of official Africa, IA's name turned black with allegations of diamond smuggling, arming of illegal groups and supporting a coup under the cover of 'conflict resolution'.

In its Sri Lanka activities, according to its own publications, IA attempted a process of comprehensive infiltration of the entire power structure using IA's already published pro separatist agenda.

IA accordingly targeted the Sri Lanka intelligentsia, the military, the business community, press and other media, religious organizations and above all, politicians. This was a cross section of the entire Sri Lankan political structure.

And when in 1995 Sri Lankan troops were about to take back Jaffna from the LTTE, Kumar Rupesinghe, as Director of IA called for UN intervention to prevent Jaffna being regained.

After a major series of scandals including in Sierra Leone, IA was internationally attacked, then probed. It lost law suits by London employees on charges of gross discrimination.

Its funder Norway commissioned an inquiry which found fault with its Sierra Leone and Sri Lanka activities. Under this cloud, its Director Kumar Rupesinghe soon resigned.

Kumar Rupesinghe is back in Sri Lanka today and sponsoring among others the Muslim cause and writing about "Regaining Muslim coastal and fishing lands in the East". These coastal and fishing lands were lost precisely because of the exclusive Tamil zones demarcated by his International Alert.

Kumar Rupesinghe has also campaigned for the ISGA as reflecting "the maturity of the political debate in the country" and said "the ISGA is the only vehicle".

He also campaigned for P-TOMS as "the only way out". Kumar Rupesinghe the very man who asked the UN to stop the takeover of Jaffna has become, according to the Association's own sources, an advisor to the Flag Officers Association.

The Association consists of ex-senior officers and has helped form the country's defence policy. Rupesinghe's changing, clearly opportunistic views on the country's ills have again shifted. He finds (Daily Mirror December 30, 2005) that the tsunami reconstruction delays are due to caste factors!

The UNP which politically campaigned on reconstruction delays never saw caste factors and neither did any other, apart from Rupesinghe.

A Chief ally of IA and other similar foreign intruders is the National Peace Council (NPC). The NPC, like the IA has spelled out in their publications detailed plans to brainwash the country from the top political hierarchy to the grass roots through comprehensive propaganda. The NPC launched propaganda for the Interim Self-Governing Authority (ISGA).

It congratulated the government and LTTE and the Norwegian facilitators for signing the P-TOMS. After P-TOMS was suspended by courts, NPC advocated UNP and SLFP together to accommodate P-TOMS. It also wanted the constitution changed to accommodate the ISGA and P-TOMS.

The organizer of the National Peace Council participated in a March and rally of the Tigers' territory in Geneva and spoke at the rally. According to an LTTE front magazine Hot Spring, the "rally ended with [the LTTE] liberation song sung in chorus".

After the Indian Accord, National Peace Council's Jehan Perera had once threatened Sri Lanka with dire consequences from the Indian army. Jehan Perera has questioned the need for sovereignty and had called among others for "shared sovereignty" and "two near-states".

These are only the tip of the iceberg, just trawl Perera's writings and you will come across far more anti Sri Lanka statements.

Investigation into chief anti LTTE investigator Muthalieff's death showed that the LTTE suspects had also visited the Kotelawala Defence Academy. Jehan Perera's anti Sri Lanka statements have been well rewarded; he lectures to our military at the Kotelawala Defence Academy.

A most insidious organization is the Berghof Foundation. It has announced that it wants to train the Sri Lanka's security sector for a total remaking of their thinking. Under the security sector, they include the "military, para-militaries and police forces".

Berghof Foundation says it wants to manage and monitor the security sector through NGOs and "the international community". Berghof also requires "demilitarization" [their words] of the armed forces.

They want to "disarm", "demobilize" and "right- size the political and economic role of the military". And among "institutions with a role in managing and monitoring the security sector" they included NGOs and "the international community". Foreign funded NGOs and the so-called international community are now to manage our security forces.

For the first time, since Independence there is an attempt to bring our armed forces under foreign heel. And at a time of grave danger to our sovereignty, Berghof aims at disbanding part of our forces - rightsizing. An uninvited foreign organization will determine through their foreign funded NGOs the right size of our military.

To achieve its aims, Berghof has a careful plan of brain washing "decision-makers, their advisors, politicians and political practitioners, senior civil servants and influentials from all parties and sections of society." Berghof wants to change radically what we think by "promoting curriculum changes and research in academic and research institutions, and in defence academies".

The Berghof Foundation, aims at restructuring not only the armed forces but also it says, our State. Berghof also want to bring in foreign countries as so-called "international stakeholders on Sri Lanka's process of conflict transformation".

They thus want to institutionalize foreign interference in our internal affairs, especially its defence. And on what basis?

Berghof accepts the fiction of Tamil traditional homelands. And it wants to "explore a range of models of governance and local governance for the North-East and the rest of the country".

Air force seniors with links to Berghof Foundation attempted a few months ago to train Air Force officers on the Berghof ideology and demilitarization of the Air Force.

This however was prevented just in time by the intervention of higher ups. Berghof it should be noted accepts self-determination, the traditional homelands fiction and rejects the unitary state - all central planks of President Rajapakse's policy statements. Yet Berghof does all its mischief and interference through an agreement with the Sri Lankan government!

Seeming independent, many of these NGOs are interlocked. They constitute a joint front of a few individuals propped up by huge doses of foreign money. Berghof lists several NGOs depending on foreign hand outs linked to them.

Thus their ideologues published by Berghof include Center for Policy Alternative's (CPA) Ketheshwaran Loganathan and Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu. Foreign funded CPA has questioned the need for sovereignty and advocated foreign intervention. CPA has welcomed the ISGA and has said that signing of the P-TOMS is necessary.

These suspect foreign funded organizations have questioned our integrity. They constitute anti-nationals who threaten Sri Lanka. Their NGO tentacles have penetrated deep into this government and the last one and threaten the country's defence. Since Independence, they have become the major factor outside the LTTE of subverting the country's interests. In the US, the Logan Act prohibits U.S. private citizens from interfering with foreign policy.

No other Asian country would tolerate this state of affairs. Yet NGOs that do not interfere in the sovereignty of Sri Lanka do no harm and should be welcome.

Foreign funded NGOs have a role to play in such benign areas such as health and tsunami relief. But no foreign organization should interfere in our sovereignty.

The different actions of foreign funded NGOs are a set of attempted coups by a group of unelected persons without any popular support and based only on foreign money to change Sri Lanka's political course. These attempts are more insidious than that of the failed coup of 1962.

Foreign funded NGOs have openly declared that they wish to change the thinking of the government, the armed forces and political parties, to influence the military and weaken it to their working.

Such NGOs have stood continuously for foreign intervention, worked against our sovereignty, wants to restructure the state and armed forces, accepted the Tamil traditional homelands hoax, have infiltrated political parties, the armed forces and media and advocated directly and indirectly the break-up of the country. They in inviting foreign intervention are in effect sponsoring re-colonization.

This banding together of unrepresentative groups based on foreign resources to suppress the will of the people seems to be very much like old fashioned colonization.

While the LTTE is flexing its muscles and breaking the ceasefire on a daily basis, our thinking continues to be manipulated by foreign funds on the LTTE's behalf. NGO induced anti national propaganda has infiltrated all sections of the private and state media.

They make no secret; the likes of IA, Berghof and NPC explicitly state that influencing journalists and key centers of power to their [anti national] ways of thinking is their objective. They do that also by paying journalists for consultations and sending them to seminars and trips abroad - well tested means of subversion.

In other countries, the private media competes with each other for the market and only those that appeal to it survive. But in Sri Lanka almost all private media especially the English language ones have NGO proxies.

That is why the market mechanism that one would think would selectively shut down organs spreading hate against the country has become ineffective.