Ex- President: Many NGOs thwart reconcilation, promote resentment

By Rathindra Kuruwita

A large number of NGOs actively worked against reconciliation in the country by preventing people from overcoming various traumas they had endured in the past, former President Maithripala Sirisena said yesterday, before the Presidential Commission of Inquiry (PCoI) investigating the Easter Sunday attacks.

“All governments have faced this problem. There are some good NGOs, but a large number of them want to ensure that people are angry and resentful. During my time as the President, NGOs played a big role in thwarting our reconciliation work.”

Sirisena said that those NGOs often overstepped their limits. Some of them, on the pretext of helping kindergarten children had visited Tamil villages and performed dramas based on the war. “They want children who had not faced war to be traumatized,” he said.

Sirisena also said that some Muslim organisations, too, had brought in extremist preachers into the country and those men had played a significant role in the spread of Wahabism.