Day Three Strategic Alliance Visit

Day Three
The whole of today was dedicated to meetings and discussions with various researchers at the International Center for Political Violence and Terrorism Research (ICPVTR) of the Nanyang Technological University. In fact ICPVTR is our main research collaborator for our research project related to Non-Profit Organizations. In the morning we were given some background briefing of ICPVTR activities and publications by the centre’s Associate Research Fellow, Ms Diane Russel Ong Junio. In attendance to our meeting was Dr Arabinda Acharya, a Research Fellow and Manager of Strategic Projects. As Dr Archarya was one of the two founding members of the center, he recounted the establishment of ICPVTR, one of which was as a result of the 9/11 bombing of the world trade center by extremists in the US in 2001. Basically the research center was set up as an initiative to understand why terrorism financing occurs and how it was carried out. Based on scientific analytical techniques,ICPVTR provides answers and proposes counter-measures and preventive mechanisms to combat money laundering and terrorism financing. Basically, ICPVTR research activities are premised on four core objectives: (i) To conduct sustained research and analysis of terrorist, guerilla, militia and extremist political groups and their support bases. To this end, the Centre collects and analyses literature seeking to politicize and mobilize the public into supporting extremism and participating in violence; (ii) To identify the strengths and weaknesses of international, state and societal responses in managing the threat of political violence; (iii) To provide high quality instruction and training for officials and future leaders engaged in combating terrorism and other forms of political violence and (iv) To advise governments and inform societies affected by political violence on how best to manage the current and evolving threat. In the afternoon, Prof Dr Rohan Gunaratna, the Head of ICPVTR joined the meeting and he shared with us his own encounters and investigations in terrorism-related research. We were convinced that ICPVTR is indeed a good benchmark for ARI. We agreed to set up a research group (at ARI) that will be focusing on research to counter terrorism financing (TF) in the country. Various programs have been planned for 2011. Later in the afternoon, we were brought to tour the facilities available at ICPVTR. Very impressive indeed…