Colombo's NGO Secretariat trains NGO activists to collaborate with SL military

[TamilNet, Sunday, 14 October 2018, 09:05 GMT]
The Director-General of Colombo's NGO Secretariat Shakya Nanayakkara, who was giving a lecture in Batticaloa to NGO and CBO activists on Thursday, was questioning the Tamil activists in Batticaloa why they were reluctant to collaborate with the SL military and police, NGO workers who attended the training programme said. The so-called ‘National Secretariat for Non-Governmental Organizations’ (NSNGO), also known as NGO Secretariat, has been trying to control the civil society, Community Based Organisations and local NGOs by creating ‘federations’ at district-level.

Mr Nanayakara was telling the participants that the coordinating body of NGOs in Ki'linochchi district was fully collaborating with the ‘security’ establishment of Colombo and questioned why the activists in Batticaloa were reluctant to do so. He was promoting a linkage between the civil organisations and the SL Police.

The NGO Secretariat and the SL Ministry of ‘National Dialogue’ are running programmes to impose ‘Sri Lankan’ identity on Eezham Tamils at the district level. They talk about building ‘a prosperous nation with a Sri Lankan identity’ and coerce the grassroots entities to collaborate with the ‘National Dialogue’ through district-level institutions that are tightly controlled by the unitary state mechanism in Colombo. Provincial councils have been systematically sidelined, the NGO activists watching the trends of the ‘NGO’ coordination of Mano Ganesan's ministry said.

Nanayakkara was promoting ‘District Reconciliation Committee’ in Batticaloa.

The secretary of ex-paramilitary operative Vinayagamoorthy Muralitharan alias Karuna, V. Kamalathas, is also the secretary of the Batticaloa District Reconciliation Committee.

Mr Kamalathas was also present at the meetings held by Mr Nanayakara and was airing anti-North sentiments, the activists said questioning Colombo's diktats dubbed as reconciliation.

The right way of looking at reconciliation would be resolving the underlying national question of Eezham Tamils and allowing the elected democratic bodies such as the provincial councils to operate the Police and approach reconciliation instead of enforcing the Sinhala unitary system upon at district level, the activists commented.

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