As the army commenced its march to capture Jaffna town, the headquarters of the LTTE, it became apparent that the LTTE could not stop the offensive. There were reports of the civilian people leaving their homes and moving away from the direction of the offensive. Reports also said that the LTTE had ordered civilians to leave with them.
While these developments were taking place, the LTTE lobbies in the West moved into action. Prabhakaran had one card to play. Blow up the issue of fleeing civilians and paint a Rwanda scenario. The censorship helped Prabhakaran in a big way.
Many NGOs wittingly or unwittingly made moves that would help the LTTE by projecting a picture of an army pursuing civilians. Little was said about the government’s efforts to provide food and medicines to the displaced civilians.
By strange coincidence an organisation called the ‘NGO Forum for Sri Lanka’ was to hold its annual sessions at Bentota at this crucial time. The achievements of this organisation are evident from a document we reproduce on this page.
We also reproduce a letter of Medicines Sans Frontieres protesting to ‘The Island’ about its reportage, letters to the Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadiragamar by pro and anti-NGO Forum speakers and well as a letter of inquiry to the British High Commissioner in Colombo.
The ‘Island’ of Tuesday, 14th November carried in its front page a news item in which it was stated that the two Catholic priests who were taken into custody at Thandikulam, Vavuniya, recently, had confessed that several local NGOs were contributing large sums of money to the LTTE. They are also reported to have revealed that money was being collected on the pretext that such funds are being sent to war stricken civilians in the North.
This information is nothing new. For quite sometime those who were aware of the activities of leading figures in the NGO world knew that many foreign funded organisations were in actual fact Trojan horses operating under the guise of alleviating poverty, providing assistance to social welfare programmes, promoting cultural ethnic and religious harmony and similar activities.
Information furnished to the relevant authorities that the work of many of these foreign funded organisations of do-gooders was not entirely bona-fide fell on deaf ears, until one day the late President Premadasa awoke to the fact that it was just possible that the allegations might be true after all.
The result was the appointment of the Wanasundara Commission to inquire, among other things, into whether funds received from foreign sources as well as generated locally were being misappropriated and/or being used for activities prejudicial to national security, public order and/or economic interest and for activities detrimental to the maintenance of ethnic religious and cultural harmony among the people of this country.
That this was happening and that there was no effective monitoring of the activities of such organisations and their funding formed the gravamen of an earlier report submitted after a preliminary inquiry by a special committee appointed for the purpose.
The report of the Wanasundara Commission was submitted to the then government in December 1993, but it has not yet been published. It would be interesting to find out who has been responsible for aborting the publication of the report. Is it that foreign funds are behind the decision of those whose responsibility it was to ensure the publication of the report, not to go ahead and to do so?.
Whatever it be, the present government must at least now, sit up and take note of the fact that a completely laissez-faire attitude has prevailed upto now towards the activities of foreign funded NGOs on the part of the governments after 1977. and decide on a policy to be implemented in respect of those organisations. The Kumaratunga government can begin by deciding to publish the Wanasundara report immediately.
Our neighbouring states have not been as complacent as we have been in respect of NGOs. Meaningful steps have been taken by them to monitor the activities of the NGO sector, especially the foreign funded category. Some of the problems that this country has been saddled with in recent times may quite possibly never have occurred at all, had we been more alert and alive to the danger of permitting the uncontrolled inflow of foreign funds to support of the activities of wolves in sheeps clothing.
Our attitudes and policies (rather the absence of a policy) towards NGOs have upto now been far too permissive.
Take the recent case of the Medicins sans Frontieres making international appeals for civilians displaced in the North. A senior diplomat now in retirement, who was responsible for overseeing and monitoring in the Foreign Ministry, during the regimes of Sir John Kotelawala, S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike, and Mrs Bandaranaike, the inflow of foreign funds for local organisations and institutions, told me that if any foreign organisation operating in this country had behaved then as the M.S.F had done recently, it would have been booted out the very next day.
Those of us who know the history of our land - of course, we never learn - should be vary of foreign intervention in our internal affairs. Some of the foreign funded NGOs are so entrenched in this country that when the Wanasundara Commission was appointed by President Premadasa, they thought the work of the commission was strictly not necessary or undesirable and even questioned the right of the government to investigate their activities. They seemed to regard their domain as a no-go area for the government. What impudence !. Foreign funded and foreign based NGOs functioning in this country seem to forget that the host government would expect them to act in goog faith without hidden policies and secret agendas.
A most recent instance of the blatant abuse of a host country’s hospitality and its government’s liberal policies was the attempt by the London based NGO forum on Sri Lanka of the United Kingdom to hold a conference first in Bentota and when that failed, to shift the venue to Attidiya, Ramalana.
In the first place, no prior permission to hold the conference or seminar, or whatever one calls it, had been obtained from our Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This is an absolutely essential requirement not of recent origin, but dating back to the early years of independence, I am reliably informed by my diplomat friend.
Secondly, I am told that quite a few of the foreign participants had entered the country as tourists, on tourist visas, and not as delegates to a conference. Such false declarations if it had indeed been made to the immigration officers at the port of entry, renders the visitor liable to deportation. I hope the controller of immigration does that.
What takes the cake however is the stuff that is said to be found in the conference documents, which one hopes has already been brought to the notice of President Kumaratunga.
(1) The army is said to be participating from 1978 onwards in a civil war against the Tamil people!.
(2) Despite the various pre-election commitments of the PA government with regard to promotion and enhancement of Human Rights in Sri Lanka, the Human Rights situation in the country remains a matter of grave concern.
(3) Whether or not the (devolution) package is accepted by parliament, whether or not there is a national referendum in the matter, whether or not the PA wins, there remains a wide range of issues with regard to the affirmation of basic principles of equality and non-discrimination as far as minority communities living in Sri Lanka are concerned, that will need to be taken up by the Human Rights community.
Surely President Kumaratunga cannot allow the liberal policies of her government to be interpreted as being an open invitation to foreigners to interfere in the internal affairs of this country. One hopes that she is aware that foreign funding NGOs now receive the bulk of their funds from their own governments rather than from private sources. That is why the concern in our internal affairs of both foreign-funded local NGOs and foreign based NGOs operating in the country, become insidious, such NGOs are the servants of the national interests of the governments which finance them. For that reason it is the duty of a responsible government to ensure that NGOs are prevented from being manipulated.
In the new role that local NGOs have taken upon themselves, that is of attempting to influence a government’s policies and interfere with their implementation, an NGO could in some instances be wittingly or unwittingly conniving in or collaborating with unfriendly foreign agencies. As a team that has made an in depth study of the nature and work of NGOs has observed, ‘Such foreign organisations may enlist unsuspecting local NGOs by offer of money or other deceitful means to support their designs which may be to subvert national sovereignties and the progress and development of third world countries. Local NGOs should be extremely wary of getting drawn into the fold of larger international forces exploiting the third world. While NGOs have a duty to play their ordained role which includes constructive criticism of the government, this should not be done indiscriminately. There would be occasions when silence is an option. There would be occasions where destructive or even constructive criticism may burden or weaken the state which may be placed at odds battling devious and designing powerful international forces.
Lankan expats write to UK HC
Your Excellency,
The British Refugee Council and Anti Sri Lanka Government Campaign
We have been requested to bring to your attention the following information with a view to obtaining clarification on the above mentioned subject.
A group of European based Non-Government Organisations (NGOs) allegedly hosted by ‘the refugee council’ are planning to hold a two day consultation meeting commencing 15 November 1995 at the Bentota Beach Hotel.
One Mr. Bryh Wolfe positioning as Executive Secretary NGO Forum on Sri Lanka is coordinating the planned two day gathering from 3 Bondway, London SW18 1SJ. ‘The refugee council’ has a letterhead with Tel. 0171 582 9922 and Fax no. 171 582 8829. (Please see attached letter).
Now according to our knowledge number 3 Bondway, London SW18 1SJ is listed as the official address and Tel/Fax numbers of The British Refugee Council.
The NGO Forum whilst admitting that the Sri Lankan government is continuing to supply food and medical aid to LTTE controlled areas has also accused the government of ‘systematically blocking of humanitarian access for additional food.’
In addition the Forum is of the view that the human rights situation under Peoples Alliance government ‘remains a matter ....’