To increase the level of knowledge of state officers on Prevention of Violent Extremism (PVE) concepts and skills for PVE implementation, NPC held two one day training programmes in Ampara and Mannar for 86 District and Divisional level state officers including Grama Niladaris, development officers and social services officers who were directly involved with the community under NPC’s project Prevention of Violent Extremism - Capacity Building in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.
Participants learnt about push and pull factors of extremism the context of post independent politics, the JVP insurrections, Tamil minority alienation and the Easter Sunday attacks. In Ampara participants discussed land issues and found that local politicians were mainly responsible for polarising different religious and ethnic communities. They recommended that a new law be introduced to ban political parties with extremist ideologies and to prevent religious parties from being involved in politics.
In Mannar participants identified army checked points as a push factor for radicalisation. They did not accept the reason that checkpoints were necessary to prevent smuggling and suggested.