Susantha Goonatilake's reply to Dr. Kumar Rupesinghe:

Have open conference on traitors Inc.? - Part 2

Continued from January 20

THE leading news magazine of Finland (Helsingen Sanomat 4 February 1993) did a cover story on him calling him the Prince of Sri Lanka and detailed gross misuse of facilities there and named also several SSA members who had been brought there as highly paid, academic incompetents.

That news magazine also had a map which detailed transfer of funds across the globe, which the magazine questioned.

The gross distortions that these groups have made on Sri Lanka were the subject of a long book by me titled Athropologising Sri Lanka: a Civilisational Misadventure.

The book within the sociology of knowledge and published by the Indiana University Press is by Sri Lankan standards expensive but if one wants to know about the gross distortions these groups make, kindly read that.

Some local libraries have it. When this book came out, it was the subject of a special article in the American journal of university letters Lingua Franca.

In addition, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation had a live interview with me for nearly half an hour conducted by Phillip Adams whose programs are comparable to the BBCs Simpson's World or Alistair Cooke.

The thrust of the interviewer was how could people get away with saying such mistruths. My answer was on the lines that hardly any in Sri Lanka, even in local sociology and anthropology departments, even know about these publications, let alone the lies being told there in.

Rupesinghe mentions that I had wanted to be the Governor of the Central Bank in the event of a JVP government! Surely, Kumar, you can be a bit more inventive and credible.

Would you think that I who had often changed careers and disciplines at will, would want such a bureaucratic job? But it is true that during the period 1987-90, I interacted with many students who had JVP sympathies - then as now the major student union was JVP oriented.

Consequently, at the time many leaders of the present JVP who became ministers as well as younger members of the JHU (they were all in the same student union) did indeed interact with me. The major reason: my wife had been appointed by President Premadasa on a committee to monitor student disappearances.

She was at the time Vice President of the Federation of University Teachers Associations as well as the founder Secretary of the national level UTHR (after she left Sri Lanka, only the Jaffna branch now remains). So we had a front seat view of what was happening then on human rights and reported them as it happened.

These experiences are well documented internationally in a book Academic Freedom. During that time, we also interacted with many other individuals on the real Sri Lankan ground concerned about government death squads (including the present President Mahinda Rajapakse).

Like now, at the time, foreign funded groups were feeding partial truth to the world outside. This was amply seen when Mangala Samaraweera representing the disappeared later came to New York to put across the gross violations occurring in Sri Lanka, but had to face a wall of mistruth - as for example in a US radio interview we arranged for him (he was staying at our house).

Rupesinghe also mentions my distaste for Sarvodaya, which again arose out of innocent inquiry. In the late 1970s after the handloom industry was being disenfranchised by the new open economy, I asked its leader publicly at a meeting what his position on this was, because handlooms was an essential plank of the Gandhi based original Indian Sarvodaya.

Disingenuously he said, he was only a simple man and that it was for intellectuals like me to answer the question and he invited me to do so.

Accepting his invitation, my research on Sarvodaya using its own publications incidentally found that surprisingly, the government sector was far more efficient than Sarvodaya! I presented these findings at a local seminar and later at an international one at the Institute for Social Studies, The Hague.

The main funder of Sarvodaya NOVIB was housed in the same building and when I returned to Sri Lanka, I found myself subject to a government inquiry on this paper - for saying that the government was doing better than this foreign funded NGO! I was then asked not to travel abroad (all my travels were on personal academic invitations and I had never traveled through my employer).

The travel ban lasted nearly one year; clearly Sarvodaya did not want the true facts revealed outside the country where his financiers lived.

Subsequently through a trumped up charge behind which was Sarvodaya I was interdicted for one year for carrying a picture on the Economic Review depicting a computer in a meditative pose.

My aim was to raise questions of how computers, especially Artificial Intelligence would impact on South Asian thought. Sarvodaya spread the story that the picture was that of the Buddha and hence my interdiction.

The subsequent inquiry held under the retired Chief Justice Tennakoon quickly dismissed all these charges after expert witnesses such as Venerable Prof. Bellanwila Wimalaratana, Venerable Mapalagama Vipulasara and Prof. Chandra Wickremegamage gave evidence that pooh-poohed the insulting the Buddha charge.

If however interested persons want to know the real nature of Sarvodaya they should go to past paper cuttings of the NGO Commission in which not only did a large amount of information on Sarvodaya's mischief come to light, but its leader himself gave all sorts of excuses for not appearing before the Commission.

Hairs would stand reading what Sarvodaya had done! And if one wants stronger indictments against Sarvodaya, I would suggest they read Rupasinghe's own Janavegaya.

I must once again apologise to the editor and the reader for this personal odyssey, it was made necessary by Rupasinghe's diversionary insults.

I will later deal with how the organisations associated with Rupesinghe have acted against Sri Lanka, which was the thrust of my article, not my or his private doings. But first let me deal with that foreign interloper carrying the White Man's Burden, the Director of the Berghof Foundation, Roper.

This man, who 50 years after Independence has arrogated to himself to defame this country by interfering in our internal affairs by influencing through financial largesse in the form of conflict resolution has the sheer gall to call my remarks " highly defamatory".

Their conflict resolutions are not for their countries like the US, Germany or the UK who are involved in terrible armed conflicts today.

The messages of these new missionaries are only for us, carried through their local kanganies they employ. While the LTTE has been using the ceasefire not only to transgress it but also to build itself militarily, these busybodies have been lecturing us how to do our business.

Our country has today become an open sieve for every white Tom, Dick and Harry not to mention Jane to put his finger in. In the discussion below, I quote directly from Berghof's own writings and website. (I hope they have not pulled these down.)

Roper Berghof Foundation attempted in 2004 a remaking of the Sri Lanka Air Force; for the first time since Independence to bring Sri Lankan armed forces under foreign control.

This was in a Proposal for a workshop for Air Force personnel by the Berghof Foundation submitted to Sri Lanka Foundation in August 2004 and shot down after higher defence authorities heard of it.

According to their own documents, Berghof have been trying to tread on the country's sovereign prerogatives by what they term security sector reform.

Under the security sector, they include the military, paramilitaries and police forces. And among institutions with a role in managing and monitoring the security sector, they included foreign-funded NGOs and the international community. NGOs and the so-called international community are now to manage Sri Lanka security forces.

Berghof advocates Sri Lanka's demilitarization, de-mobilization and disarmament words taken from their own documents.

At a time of grave danger to Sri Lanka's sovereignty, Berghof wants in essence to disband its forces the only meaning of these words. This transformation of the security sector Berghof claims is critical to the success of peace agreements.

Translated to ground reality, this means disarming the country's military, surrendering to the LTTEs demands and so bringing peace.

Berghof also want to right-size the political and economic role of the military, meaning an uninvited foreign organization will determine through, Berghof says, foreign-funded NGOs, the right size of Sri Lanka's military, a primary responsibility of the Government.

It wants to do a so-called Independent Assessment of High Security Zones. It again arrogates to itself the sovereign rights of Sri Lanka to decide on our security - imagine outsiders deciding the defence requirements of any Western country.

Berghof also wants to bring in foreign countries as so-called international stakeholders on Sri Lanka's process of conflict transformation, formally allowing foreigners to interfere in Sri Lanka's internal affairs.

The Berghof Foundation, aims at restructuring not only the armed forces but also it says, the State through an interim arrangement designed by them. This they are again doing through a small group of foreign-funded NGOs.

It wants to structure the form of the future state and inter-ethnic relations. At the centre of its dialogue is re-structuring the State. These all sound very much like what was happening in the bad old colonial days.

The Berghof Foundation says it is planning an initiative that will bring together a small group of key civil society [that is NGO] actors. This is to develop a civil society [that is NGO] vision of what the constitutional order should look like in a restructured Sri Lankan State.

The initiative will ask these actors to reflect on and then imagine not just the broad contours of a final constitutional settlement, but some of its more intricate details as well.

The criteria for their proposed restructuring of the State are indicated by Berghof's position vis-a-vis Sri Lanka's complicated current situation.

Berghof accepts the fiction of Tamil traditional homelands. (He has co-authored writings with Keethiswaran Loganathan who represented separatists at Timpu which came up with the notorious Timpu principles).

Berghof assumes the concept of self-determination within existing states rejected by the UN as only a basis for separatism.

For these ends, it sponsored a visit on self-determination to Sri Lanka by one Helena Whall naming her an eminent scholar. She is an LTTE supporter who published The Right to Self-Determination: the Sri Lankan Tamil National Question, a charter for Tamil separatism.

To achieve its ambitious goals, Berghof wants a total make over of Sri Lankan thinking. It wants to carry the message to decision-makers, their advisors, politicians and political practitioners, senior civil servants and influentials from all parties and sections of society.

Berghof aims to radically change what Sri Lankans think by promoting curriculum changes and research in academic and research institutions, and in defence academies. This is a careful plan of brain washing.

Their announced methods also go through the entire gamut of workshops and discussions, studies and research papers, exposure and study visits for defence personnel, exposure and study visits for civil society [read NGOs], scholarships for research and graduate study.

It also envisages visits to Sri Lanka from personnel attached to defence institutions overseas and from scholars and technical assistance for specific Sri Lankan entities (e.g. the Defence Review Committee).

They wish to link with the initiatives of other donors and institutions are to be done under Berghof aegis. A total make over is being attempted. The new white missionaries (Berghof and co) together with their local priests are in congress to settle, like in colonial times, our problems.

Roper says that Berghof's objectives are "in full accordance with President Rajapakse's aim of establishing an honourable peace".

President Rajapakse's stated aims are incorporated in his well-known 12 points. President Rajapakse's honourable peace rejects self-determination (Berghof invites a pro Tiger ideologue Whall elevating her as an eminent scholar to make pronouncements on self-determination), rejects the fiction of traditional homelands abandoning a key plank of the so-called Timpu principles imposed on Sri Lanka (Roper himself authors papers with Loganathan who represented the separatist position at Timpu), rejects federalism in support of the unitary state (almost all Berghof's activities stem from accepting federalism), accepts that the ceasefire signed has many flaws as it handed over formal control to a single-minded dictator (a central plank of Berghof Foundation is not to question the CFA and to placate this dictator not confront him ideologically), rejects ISGA and P-TOMS (which Berghof sponsored). The list could go on.

I must apologize for this lengthy response. It is clear that the White Man's Burden is truly heavy as it attempts to indirectly govern by misleading the natives through its local beneficiaries.

The details and nuances cannot be dealt in newspaper articles. So let me invite them for an open public seminar to present their views and let the public judge.

I only hope that unlike the last time, they do not get cold feet and keep away.

No, I wont call it Foreign Funded NGOs: Traitors Inc? I am sure a different set of foreigners, our own countrymen living abroad - the World Association for Peace in Sri Lanka (WAPS) would gladly sponsor it.

In the meantime, in the public interest, will Berghof (and others) put out the names of all personnel, especially of journalists and the security forces serving and retired, they have sponsored and the monies they have paid.

Or will they wait till the Parliamentary Committee on NGOs, where this information will be prised open from Roper. Even in colonial times, the foreign authorities would not hide such information.

 (Concluded)