How government-sponsored groups masquerade as civil society.
The Myanmar Women’s Affairs Federation is a GONGO. So is Nashi, a Russian youth group, and the Sudanese Human Rights Organization. Saudi Arabia’s International Islamic Relief Organization is also a GONGO, as is Chongryon, the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan. GONGOs are everywhere, in China, Cuba, France, Tunisia, and even the United States.
GONGOs are government-sponsored non-governmental organizations. Behind this contradictory and almost laughable tongue twister lies an important and growing global trend that deserves more scrutiny: governments funding and controlling nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), often stealthily. Some GONGOs are benign, others irrelevant. But many, including those mentioned above, are dangerous.
Attack Of The GONGOs: Government-Organized NGOs Flood Warsaw Meeting.
Some of these NGOs are not like the other ones.
ne’s Russian-occupied territory of Crimea to Central Asia, repressive regimes in former Soviet republics have been setting up fake nongovernmental organizations — so-called GONGOs — to try to influence the international debate about their poor human rights records.
Some GONGOs from Central Asia furtively attempted to infiltrate a coalition of bona fide civil-society activists who work with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
New York-based Human Rights Watch says GONGOs from Tajikistan that have been proliferating since 2016 were in large concentrations at the OSCE’s Human Dimension Implementation Meeting (HDIM) in Warsaw, and even threatened self-exiled Tajik rights activists who view the forum as the only international venue where they can call attention to abuses by the authorities in Dushanbe.
Russia-backed GONGOs at the conference blatantly championed the Kremlin’s policy goals in Crimea — leading to angry shouting matches with Ukrainian government delegates who walked out in protest….Rferl.org
Finger-Puppets: Kremlin planning to get back in the GONGO business in a big way