NSHR coffers dry up

By Asser Ntinda

The coffers of the National Society for Human Rights, NSHR, have dried up and its employees have not been paid for nine months. This came about following NSHR’s careless and reckless utterances over the past years.

Donor funds which have sustained the NSHR are now short in supply largely because countries which were channeling the money to NSHR have grown tired of NSHR’s lies, fabrications and anti-government utterances, especially by its Executive Director, Phil Ya Nangoloh.

“I can confirm that,” said one NSHR employee. “We have not been paid for nine months now and it does not look like we will be paid anytime soon. There is no money. Countries that usually fund NSHR say that we have become too political and no longer concentrate on human rights issues.

“We behave as if we are an opposition party, mainly targeting SWAPO Party and the government. That has annoyed our donors who do not want to be seen to be undermining democracy. They say they do not want to be part of our lies.”

What particularly seems to have offended the donors are fabricated stories which Ya Nangoloh drums up to justify NSHR existence. Sources said that the mass graves in the north and north-eastern parts of the country which Ya Nangoloh churned out in 2008 proved disastrous for NSHR.

“Ya Nangoloh dramatized the whole story and it really sounded as if it was true,” said one diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity. “But things turned out to be untrue. We were taken for a ride by this man.

“Police investigation revealed that the graves which Ya Nangoloh was talking about were known. There were no secret graves as Ya Nangoloh had alleged. We were embarrassed and our government back home ordered a review of our assistance to NSHR.”

In the report, titled “Enforced Disappearances: Discovery of ‘No Name’ Gravesites,” Ya Nangoloh claimed that there were “reasonable grounds” to believe that the crimes of enforced disappearance, torture, and other inhuman acts have occurred and or are occurring on a “massive scale” in Namibia.

“Such crimes were committed as part of a systematic attack on the civilian population in the northern and northeastern border areas of the country,” he alleged in the report, which was widely distributed in and outside the country.

Ya Nangoloh also alleged that there were at least “six massive gravesites,” adding that the long-term objective of his 95-page report was to “severely condemn the crime of enforced disappearance” and also to “publicize NSHR’s discovery of unmarked and mysterious gravesites” in northern and northeastern Namibia.

Ya Nangoloh, it has turned out, was simply “severely condemning” his own lies and fabrications. That report has now come to haunt its author and is one of the reasons why NSHR’s donors have severed ties with it. The report was dissected by the government following a thorough police investigation.

Ya Nangoloh was invited to part of the investigation team, but, knowing that the investigation would reveal his lies, he chickened out.

“When the report turned out to be a load of lies, we were really embarrassed and were accused of undermining law and order by supporting a human rights organization that fabricates stories to justify funding,” said the diplomat.

“We simply had to freeze our funding. We are not here to fund lies. To sum up, that report has discredited NSHR in the eyes of the diplomatic community and cost it dearly, Few countries would want to have ties with such an organization.

Namibia is too small a country for such crimes to have happened on a ‘massive scale’ without anybody noticing them. Lies do not live long.” Ya nangoloh could not be reached for comment.