The Curtain Must Fall on Anti-National NGOs

By Ananda-USA

July 14, 2014

Indeed the curtain must fall on the antics of these errant NGOs, prancing about as Law Unto Themselves, subject to no law, and behaving more as anti-government organizations (AGOs) than they are non-government organizations (NGOs).

There are those, especially US Diplomats, who even as they foment discord and civil disobedience in the country, spout various homilies to Sri Lanka on the need to preserve the right to “free expression” and “freedom of action” as if the players are always dutiful and not puppets manipulated from abroad, and referees are never needed to regulate the NGO game.

If that were true, why then does the US not blindly trust its own citizen investors to play by the rules even in financial markets? Why does the US have a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Treasury, and various permanent Congressional Senate and House Committees to exercise oversight, and regulate the financial and monetary markets?

We Sri Lankans also know very well how rich and powerful nations knowingly undermine, destabilize and overturn governments of other countries using “human rights” and “democrazy” as convenient balleyhooed pretexts, and destroy countless lives by converting their national refuges into absolute anarchies.
We also know that these purveyors of “human rights” and “democrazy” are experts in DOUBLE STANDARDS, doing the exact opposite of what they preach to others when their own nations are threatened.

Who has not heard of the restriction of civil liberties of US Citizens under the Patriot Act, or the Massive Spying by the National Security Administration (NSA) revealed by Edward Snowden? That spying violates the privacy protections guaranteed to American citizens by the US Constitution which now lies in tatters. While the privacy of American citizens is being violated willy-nilly, foreign citizens, both high and low, have no rights at all, as demonstrated by the NSA’s spying on Angela Merkel, the Chancellor of Germany.

In my view, the US Government, and indeed  any government, has the duty and the right to gather intelligence needed to protect the people of its nation, as necessity dictates. In that sense, the Patriot Act was quite appropriate to protect the United States in the aftermath of 9/11.

My problem is that the US does not accord the same rights to other nations and their governments to protect their own people just as the US protects Americans. Instead, they castigate, isolate, sanction and actively undermine other nations and their governments who act legitimately to protect their people.

If the United States was beset by 1426 NGOs, funded and directed by foreign nations, inimical to the United States, who are actively sowing civil discord, undermining the national government, what would the US do?

We can get some idea of what the US would do, by examning the actions the US has taken against the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange who is not a US citizen, and Edward Snowden, a US citizen, who exposed the NSA spying.

I know what the US would do, they would SHUT DOWN, PUNISH and EXPEL all those who engage in such activities, under the treason and national security laws of the United States. And that is as it should be.

During the last 30 years, NGOs operating within Sri Lanka brought our Motherland to its knees, aiding and abetting foreign powers in their great game. They were among the principal supporters of the LTTE who prevented the early defeat and eradication of Tamil Terrorists in Sri Lanka. They are RESPONSIBLE for extending that awful war from a couple of years to three long decades, and extinguishing the lives of 150,000 lives of Sri Lanka's innocent citizens. I ACCUSE these foreign nations of that awful crime!

Today, they are playing that same game in Syria …… demolishing the government that protected its people, setting Syria’s various communities at each other’s throats, transforming the majority of its people into hapless refugees … all in the name of undermining the principal ally of Iran in the Middle East.

And here they are again, buying and selling Sri Lankan political puppets, working in collusion with the defeated Tamil Terrorists, and their surviving political proxy, the TNA, attempting to convert Sri Lanka into another Somalia, inciting and encouraging Tamil Nadu politicians to assail Sri Lanka at every turn in their quest for a Greater Tamil Nadu, pitting India against China, all driven by their FEAR of a RESURGENT China, and their perceived NEED to CONTAIN China.

It is not a useful exercise to ask whether Sri Lanka’s alliance with China, or India’s, or the Western Neo-Colonialists' interference in Sri Lanka came first. We Sri Lankans, who bore the brunt of their Machiavellian strategies,  know very well the answer to that question in the pain of our wounds and the loss of our loved ones; we need not debate it ad infinitum as if it were an interminable did the chicken or the egg come first riddle.

What is IMPORTANT, and ESSENTIAL, to Sri Lanka’s future survival is to CONTROL, OVERSEE and REGULATE the behavior of ALL NGOs, both foreign and local, whether registered under the NGO Act or the Companies Act, with the central government or with a regional government body, operating in Sri Lanka. 

Enact the laws necessary to REGULATE their behavior, and LEVY a significant SPECIAL TAX on NGOs sufficient to pay for the Government Departments and Personnel necessary to oversee and regulate their own NGO activities. Higher the tax, fewer will be the number of fly-by-night NGOs.

Examine the history of the registered NGOs, their finances and the sources of their finances, for Anti-National Activities. SHUT DOWN those who are merely in the NGO business to enrich themselves, or to engage in anti-national activities as paid tools of foreign powers. PUNISH not only the NGO as a corporate entity, but also its managers as individuals, not only with IMPRISONING the managers, but also by CONFISCATING the PERSONAL PROPERTY of the managers of ERRANT NGOs. That will go a long way towards bringing fear and discipline into the ranks of the NGOs.

In the future, apply a 3-strikes-and-you-are-out law to NGOs. The slightest infringement of the NGO Law earns them one strike, and 3-strikes will earn a SHUT DOWN, and if a foreign NGO … permanent EXPULSION of all personnel from Sri Lanka.

In these ways, we can safeguard our Resplendent Isle, our Mother Lanka, from the depredations of these parasites dancing to the tunes of foreign paymasters.