NGO touch-me-nots

Peruse the websites, vision-mission statements and objectives in project proposals of NGOs and the majority will read like a Sunday School Sermon.   It’s all good stuff.  Lovely words.  Beautiful intentions.  You would be forgiven for thinking that the people who run these outfits are saints.  

It’s all about liberty, equality and fraternity.  Well, not those very words of course, but basically the same sentiments.  Yahapalanaya or good governance, for example, is but a 21st Century regurgitation (considering the rhetoric if not anything else) of what the French Revolution tossed out in the 18th Century.  Of course not all NGOs or the personnel therein are supporters of the yahapalanists, but in word if not in deed they are pretty much invested in the nitty gritty of good governance.  

They don’t sing ‘We shall overcome’ or the ‘Internationale’, but there’s a lot of ‘we’ll walk hand in hand,’ in the subtext of engagement, almost like background music.  It’s almost as though ‘Glory Hallelujah’ is playing on their minds all day long.  

There’s love for all.  Regardless of ethnic, religious or ideological preferences.  They all should have an equal voice.  There’s love for nature and talk of sustainable development.  There’s swearing by the notion of democracy.  There’s disavowal of crookedness, the bending of rules, the abuse of power and the subjugation of dissent.  

It almost makes one think that all the problems faced by the people would be best addressed by these ladies and gentlemen.  Let them take over and things will be fine, one is made to believe.  

“Scratch them!” I say, and the lovely picture begins to fade.  

Let’s begin with money.  The good words are ‘accountability’ and ‘transparency’.  The bad habit is that others are meant to swear by them.  Sauce for the goose but not the gander, so to say.  This is not to say that politicians and officials are squeaky clean of course, but then finger-pointers are generally expected to have untainted fingers.  If there’s any inkling of double-billing or multiple receipts, non-events being mentioned in expense columns, payments to non-existent resource persons and any other kind of financial hanky-panky, then there’s something wrong.  

NGOs club together, even if some of them vie for the same funds.  If one indulges, the others close ranks.  You don’t see any of the transparency-demanders querying the opaque among their brethren.  In fact, if anyone calls some NGO or NGO personality out for any kind of wrongdoing, in addition to the inevitable hushing up we see the whistle-blower being vilified.  Perhaps this will change once the Right to Information Act comes into force.  It is no secret that NGOs lobbied the powers that be to exclude I/NGOs from scrutiny, to no avail. Kudos to those who drafted the document and got it passed in Parliament, therefore.  

What NGOs do with bucks is an NGO touch-me-not.  It’s not the only one though.  

We see a lot of high-minded moralizing about tolerance, respect and such when it comes to identity issues.  If, however, a minority entity, religious or ethnic, does the dirty, there’s deafening silence or else cute apologizing in the form of referring to religious freedom or wailing about alleged historical discrimination — narratives beautifully constructed with liberal infusion of exaggeration and the deployment of that neat device, selectivity.  There’s a big holy cow right there. A touch-me-not, certainly.  

Nature.  It sells.  Well, as a whole and in part.  Sustainability, climate-change, biodiversity and conservation have as much buck-drawing potential as conflict-resolution, good governance and peace.  

They are all tree-hugging, animal-loving elves, one might think.  Their hearts bleed and their sorrow is sprinkled all over social media about the plight of perahera elephants, but they say nothing of horse racing or dog shows.  That’s fine, for horses and dogs are better treated than some perahera elephants, one might argue.  Then again, why not a murmur about slaughtering cattle, goats, chicken and pigs for their meat?  

Lesser creatures of ‘god’ or else is it not about elephantine love but some other kind of religious angst which may even include a need for religious conquest and therefore requires potshots at Buddhist festivals at every turn?   And then again, why the strange silence about ‘development prerogatives’ which result in destroying the natural habitat of elephants?  

Then we have trees.  They are lovely.  There are lots of them in and around Wilpattu.  No, that’s a no-go zone.  A touch-me-not.  Sure, there’s the tokenism if pushed of talking about the plight of people displaced by the war.  Of course their housing problem needs to be resolved.  On the other hand, lack of housing is not the preserve of this particular community.  If one talks precedence and uses it to fell, we’ll be with zero forest cover in a few years.  But no, while environmental NGOs have done a lot of work to draw fact and discard fiction, there’s absolutely no support from other tree-loving worthies in their tribe.  It’s an untouchable community.  Those who protest the destruction that’s taking place in Wilpattu are openly or in veiled terms accused of religious intolerance, by the very fact that the tree-fellers and the politicians backing them to the hilt, belong to a particular religious community.  

The logic is simple.  

It’s not about liberty, equality and fraternity.  It’s not about being good and saintly.  It is not about decency and civilization.  It’s about outcome preferences that essentially rebel against vision-mission statements and rip to pieces the holier-than-thou rhetoric in the NGO narrative.  

Finally, there’s capitalism.  If equality is an issue, then capitalism should be the headline, strapline, body-copy, punctuation and footnote of all NGO texts.  Not so.  It’s a touch-me-not, the Mother of all Touch-me-nots, one might argue.  A holy cow, in fact.  

Governments, mostly made of those who are bigger sized miscreants than the majority of NGO personalities, have lost the moral authority to take on NGOs.  Governments, however, are taken down by the people.  Those who profess to represent, if they do not, need to be taken on and taken out.  It is high time that civil society (R) — ‘R’ for ‘real’ — deliver some justice to civil society ‘F’ (‘F’ for ‘Fake’).  

Malinda Seneviratne is a freelance writer.  Email: malindasenevi@gmail.com.  Twitter: malindasene.

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Inhumanity and animal-cruelty through a Brusselsian lens

Brussels -- a TRAGEDY!

The word in the local streets is ‘heat’, and it comes with ‘blackouts’, ‘unannounced power cuts’, ‘sabotage-claims’ and ‘incompetence’.  The word in the global streets is actually a proper noun: ‘Brussels’. 

A few days ago, more than 30 people were killed and dozens injured in attacks at the Brussels international airport and a city metro station.  Maybe it is because such attacks are a rarity in Europe (compared to other parts of the word), we don’t know, but the Western press can’t seem to get enough of that story.   ‘Brussels’ has hogged the world’s headlines and that must, at some level, say something about the world’s heads. 

It is not unnatural for present-blood to hoof out other bloods of other times, but people do have memories and it’s not only about the fact of blood but its volume as well.  The following note, titled ‘Sympathizing [with] Brussels and the colour divide’ that I received a few minutes ago via email, gives perspective:

Yemen -- a lesser tragedy? 

‘The brutal IS bombing in Brussels deserves all the condemnation heaped on it, as well as the outpouring of sympathy for the victims.  The point I wish to make is that the immensity of all this ha-ho is because it happened in a ‘white’ country and got [and yet gets]  immense publicity from the Western Media – both print and electronic.

‘Ironically, hundreds of non-white Third Worlders are being killed daily in Syria, Libya, Yemen and Iraq by  bombers from the US,  UK, Russia, Turkey  and Saudi Arabia. It is laughable to see the publicity awarded to the pilots of the “free world” who rain bombs on countries that do not have a single anti-aircraft gun. These victims are relegated to the small type of back pages.

‘What shames me [is] the unseemly haste with which Third World leaders, including our own, rush to express their sympathy for the deaths of thirty odd ‘whites’. Not a tear have they shed for the fate of hundreds of non-white civilians mercilessly bombed by the “brave”(and totally safe) pilots of the “Free World”.’

Well, that’s the truth.  People with a long view of history in addition to a wide-angle lens could of course talk of the Belgian monarch Leopold II, who carved out a territory more than 70 times larger than his own country and went on to kill 10-15 million people. That story of Belgium and the Congo Free State from the end of the 19^th Century might sound out of place and a pernicious justification of the attack on Brussels a few days ago, but it is a pertinent interjection here simply due to the issue of selectivity: when we are taught about genocide, there’s scarcely any mention of Leopold. 

The issue is simple.  If not for the kind of selectivity referred to above, the attack-story is robbed of its tear-drawing worth.  That’s politics and considering the fact of the political that marks the attack, footnoting or ignoring outright relevant histories is a political choice and has to be politically appraised.  Put simply, ‘terrorism is terrorism, regardless of the identities of the terrorist or the victim’.

There’s bombing going on in Syria and South-Eastern Yemen, but we are told the guys getting hit are terrorists.  No mention of civilians.  By the way, more people died in Yemen than died in Brussels on that same tragic day.   That’s the political economy of coverage.   You can apply the logic to Sri Lanka’s struggle with terrorism too of course and there will be for-and-against arguments from all quarters.  At the bottom of it is a simple word: selectivity. 

Animal Kindness (as opposed to 'animal cruelty')?

Let’s move from the ‘political’ arena for a moment.   Let’s consider animal welfare.  Let’s talk of people who are livid about cruelty to animals.

A couple of weeks ago, there were cries of horror about some individuals who had captured, skinned and killed a hawk.  We are also seeing objections to the use of elephants for pageants.    The objectors have a point.  A strong point.  Few will stand up and say ‘It’s ok, they are after all animals’ (implying ‘lesser creatures’).  Few, again, will say the victims of the Brussels attacks ‘deserved it’ or ‘it’s ok because others too have been killed’. 

No cruelty here, ok?  

The problem here is the selectivity concerning the creatures in question.  Can someone who eats fish and/or meat have the moral right to object to ‘the suffering inflicted on elephants in captivity’ or ‘a captured eagle’?  Is the defense, ‘there’s legally sanctioned killing of certain animals, so our activism is framed by law’ really valid?  If it’s the cruelty that inspires horror, there cannot be justification of certain kinds of violence based on method or degree of pain inflicted.  The pig or the cow or the chicken or the goat that gets killed was not consulted about the eventuality, just as the hawk and the elephant were not. 

Are dog shows cruelty-free?  Do we assess this in terms of how many tails wagged and how much over a given period of time?  How about horse and dog racing?  ‘Kind treatment of animals,’ should we say?  Isn’t captivity in any form (in a cage, in chains or on leash) cruel?  Would it all be fine and would we be fine with it if we called them ‘pets’? 

Isn’t it in the end about preferences, the outcomes we can live with or which suit us?   Brussels is not ok, but Yemen is: elephants are no-no creatures, but horses, dogs, cattle, chicken, goats, pigs, fish, squid, prawns and crabs are yes-yes for capture, leashing, boiling, frying, currying, stewing and ‘devilling’ as the case may be. 

Shouldn’t we all stand up now and pat ourselves on our backs and roar ‘Three hearty cheers for hypocrisy’?  Well, that’s it folks.  It’s not about horrible crimes against humanity and it is not about being aghast at animal-cruelty.  It’s just us, being us, being hypocrites. 

Let's just say that the word in the local (and global) streets is just that: hypocrisy.  

Malinda Seneviratne is a freelance writer who writes a weekly column (Subterranean Transcripts) to the 'Daily Mirror'.  This article was published in the Daily Mirror on March25, 2016.

malindasenevi@gmail.com

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