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By Jayadeva Uyangoda
The on-going attack by the leaders of the Patriotic National Front (PNM) on some of Sri Lanka's NGOs
and individuals associated with them needs some political response. I provide a response in this article not
only because I have been a target of vicious attacks by the PNM, but also because this campaign of hatred
and intimidation is symptomatic of a particularly dangerous, authoritarian political trend in Sri Lanka today.
The PNM's attack on NGOs has the following thematic directions: NGOs are agents of colonialism and
imperialism; they are allies of the LTTE; they endanger the country's sovereignty and national sovereignty;
the state should control and regulate their activities. This campaign coincides with the PNM-JVP' other
campaign of the 'Year of De-colonisation.'
All these of course are not new arguments in the campaign against the so-called NGOs. For example, in
1987-89, during the second JVP insurgency, some civil society organisations were accused of being a
threat to national security and sovereignty when they welcomed the Indo-Lanka Accord of July 1987 and a
negotiated settlement to Sri Lanka's ethnic conflict.
In fact, a few of them received a letter in early 1988 that they were a threat to Sri Lanka's sovereignty and
national security and that they should immediately apologise to the Patriotic National Front, the
predecessor of the present PNM, for their acts of treason. The letter threatened the recipients that if they
did not publicly renounce all their anti-national activities (that included academic research on the ethnic
conflict!), the leaders of those organisations would have to pay the supreme penalty.
The letter, written in sociological English jargon, was signed by AK 0047. Among the research and
advocacy organisations who received this letter in 1988, during that period of extreme political violence
and terror, were Marga Institute, Social Scientists' Association, Centre for Society and Religion,
International Centre for Ethnic Studies, Sarvodaya and, the Movement for Inter Racial Justice and Equality.
Witch -hunting
It is quite interesting that some of the wording in that letter figures in the new proposal for a parliamentary
select committee on NGOs. For example, the proposal makes reference to some NGOs supposedly acting
"inimical to sovereignty and integrity of Sri Lanka" and "in a manner detrimental to the national and social
well-being" of the country. It also suggests that activities of some NGOs have adversely affected the
"national security" as well.
I have closely followed the debate on NGOs for the past two decades. In that I have found the following:
(i). The term NGOs is used loosely, without any social, scientific or rigorous definition of the term, merely to
attack, discredit, demonise and witch-hunt social, professional and religious organisations with which some
individuals do not agree. As a term of political slander, it is like calling one's enemy a CIA or RAW agent.
(ii). The civil society organisations who suffer regular attacks by the Sinhalese nationalist forces as
anti-national NGOs are those who have been active in advocating minority rights, peace and a negotiated
political settlement to the ethnic conflict. They are often branded as agents of Tamil separatism and the
LTTE. Earlier they were branded as agents of Indian imperialism. Now they are agents of Western
colonialism!
(iii). Attacking the so-called NGOs for some people is a means to settle personal and professional
enmities. The best examples of this are President Premadasa's harassment of Sarvodaya and its leader,
Dr. A. T. Ariyaratne and the attacks on Marga Institute's founder Director Godfrey Goonatilleke by another
Goonatilleke.
(iv). Attacks on 'NGOs' emanate from a particularly outdated, backward, anti- and pre-democratic
conceptualisation of state-society relations. The recent call by the PNM leader for 'mob justice' against
individually identified civil society activists constitutes a dangerous tuning point in this anti-democratic hate
politics. Let me elaborate on the last point.
Non-State politics
What has been described in the PNM attacks are professional and advocacy organisations that have been
set up by groups of individuals who share some political, intellectual, or social service visions and
objectives. They are basically voluntary associations that are located outside the sphere of state. They are
non-state entities that may sometimes espouse and even campaign for ideas, objectives and agendas with
which the state, or the regime at a given moment, may not agree at all. For example, the Civil Rights
Movement campaigned for the release of the JVP political prisoners in the early and mid 1970, to the
annoyance of government leaders at that time.
Similarly, the MIRJE stood for Tamil minority rights in the early and mid- 1980s which angered the
government as well as extreme Sinhalese nationalist forces. Some of the organisations being accused of
endangering the sovereignty of Sri Lanka's nation-state have been advocating federalist constitutional
alternative for Sri Lanka.
These are often not popular causes. Some may find them unacceptable. Some may even abhor them. But
they should have the right to exist without harassment by the state. That right is precisely the magic of
democracy and democratic politics. That is also why in a democracy, the right to dissent, the right to
freedom of _expression and association are constitutionally guaranteed. A democracy allows citizens to
form associations outside the domain of the state, espouse ideologies and work for agendas that the state
may not approve at all.
In a democracy, citizens' groups don't need to get the state approval or concurrence to advocate even an
extreme political position. Advocating and even organizing a 'proletarian revolution' is a democratic right
under bourgeois liberal democracy, even though it goes against the state and the whims of the ruling class.
In bourgeois democracies, Marxist political parties exist, despite the fact that they advocate a revolutionary
overthrow of the existing state, precisely because bourgeois democracy is supposed to tolerate its own
potential negation. To brand those who advocate federalism or a joint mechanism as a threat to national
security and sovereignty, as do the PNM and its intellectual hangers-on, is an act of denying even
bourgeois democracy. Politically, it is Pol Potism, pure and simple.
Pre-democratic
The current hate campaign against NGOs is not only anti-democratic. It also comes from a pre-democratic
and even semi-fascistic understanding of the relationship between the state and society/citizens. In this
view, the espousal of any political idea that is not acceptable to a section of the regime is anti-state! This is
political intolerance in its most dangerous form.
It smacks of a medieval understanding politics where dissent was viewed as treason. No wonder some of
them have begun to advocate that Sri Lanka should return to pre-1505 society and politics. Actually, those
who are engaged in the anti-NGO campaign espouse a political perspective which does not recognise that
there is space outside the state for autonomous social activism.
Like in the fascist ideology in Italy and Germany some decades ago, they view the state as the supreme
embodiment of social organisation and wisdom. To them any critique of the state, or a proposal for
reforming, re-working and re-constituting the state, is simply anti-state activity. Citizens who challenge the
state in terms of ideas, alternative policies and political visions are traitors! They should be investigated by
the police, controlled by the state and harassed by the state agencies!!
As a political observer, I have begun to wonder whether Sri Lankan politics was slowly moving in the
direction of a new authoritarianism. There are unmistakable signs of our society losing some of the major
democratic gains and achievements made during the last century through years of struggle and agitation.
The hate campaign against the Christian minority and the proposed anti-conversion legislation is a frontal
attack on multi-cultural foundations of our society and minority rights framework of our polity. Now the new
attempt to use the state against NGOs is a clear indication that the regime of civil and political rights in Sri
Lanka is in danger of being irreparably undermined. These attempts are being made by relatively small
political entities in parliament who have a very limited conception of democracy. They use democracy
purely in an instrumental sense, as a means to gaining state power.
As a way to monopolise the country's political and cultural space, they have an agenda to criminalise
dissent and legalise action that is illegal in terms of democratic jurisprudence.
In a fragmented parliament, they have also been able to bully the two main political parties, SLFP and
UNP, who, with all their blemishes, have allowed a multi-ethnic, democratic, pluralistic polity to take shape
in this country even amidst a prolonged civil war.
The traditional democratic political parties in Sri Lanka, the SLFP, UNP, SLMC, CWC, TNA and left parties
should not allow these half-democratic forces to use the country's parliament for undemocratic agendas
and McCarthy-type witch hunting