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Issue Number 27/28, April 2007
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Kapatiran Issue
No. 27/28, April 2007
A NEW ZEALANDER IN MINDANAO
Amongst Sea Nomads And Muslims
- Tim Howard
In August 2005 Tim Howard was one of four New
Zealanders to take part in the International Solidarity
Mission to investigate the human rights crisis in the
Philippines. His report on that, “A War Of Terror
Against The Peoples Of The Philippines: A Perspective
From The International Solidarity Mission To The Eastern
Visayas” was in Kapatiran 25/26, December 2005, and
can be read online at
http://www.converge.org.nz/psna/KapNo25n26/kap25art/art118.htm.
Prior to taking past in the ISM, Tim (making his first
visit to the Philippines) spent a month on an exposure
tour in Manila, the Cordillera, Negros and Mindanao. This
is his account of part of that 2005 exposure. Ed.
I had phoned my friend Mucha-Shim Quiling Arquiza from
where I was staying with the Columban priests in Malate,
Manila. She joked that Malate was the place for all the
outcasts (and she wasn’t referring to the priests) -
with it being the red light district, the place where
many Muslims stayed (thought to be
“terrorists”), and the poorest-of-the-poor like
the “Badjao” (a derogatory name for the Sama
Dilaut) who have drifted here in hope and are now on the
streets reduced to begging, sleeping on cardboard on the
pavements. I was to meet Sama Dilaut with Mucha soon at
Zamboanga City in Mindanao, and in the Sulu archipelago,
in the very south of the Philippines. The morning papers
on the day I went south reported two Abu Sayyaf Group *
members were killed, one wounded, 17 escaped, in an
attack on an Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) camp
in Mindanao. “Caucasians were involved” - a
reference to US (or possibly Australian) troops. * Abu
Sayyaf Group –a small band of terrorist bandits
operating in southernmost Mindanao and the southernmost
Philippine islands between Mindanao and Borneo. They
provide the “War On Terror” justification for
the US military presence in those parts of the
Philippines, being misleadingly lumped in with authentic
Muslim separatist guerrilla armies. Ed.
Mucha and I had met in Durban, South Africa, at the World
Conference Against Racism in 2001 where she had been
representing a Muslim-based Interfaith Dialogue group.
This time I was to be in the Philippines sponsored by the
Philippines Solidarity Network of Aotearoa (PSNA) on an
International Solidarity Mission investigating State
terrorism in the country George Bush had tagged as the
“Second Front in the ‘War on
Terror’”, as well as – sponsored by my
employer Northland Urban Rural Mission – on an
exposure programme with Philippine research institute,
the IBON Foundation, looking at the use of action
research methods of community development.
The arrangement to head south became possible at the last
minute with the change of my plans to be elsewhere in
Mindanao, and with the cancellation of a working visit to
Zamboanga City by two UK indigenous peoples’ rights
lawyers. They were to have worked with the Sama Dilaut on
their ancestral sea claim in Zamboanga City and out in
the islands, alongside Mucha’s organisation Lumah ma
Dilaut in Zamboanga, but decided to delay apparently
because of the public furore calling for the ouster of
President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, and possibly because
of the reports of bombings in the city. They had arranged
to hire three police (Pulis Turista), as personal
security guards 24/7 during their stay, which sounded to
me like a real liability. Some of the priests raised
their eyebrows at my destination.
Mucha confirmed that I would stay at their office, and
that they would pick me up at the airport. She would be
wearing a red top and black head veil. I said they were
the colours of Maori resistance and self-determination in
this country; she liked the connection. Mucha works with
the Sama Dilaut, and is from a closely related Sama clan
herself. Her parents had to move from Jolo Island to
mainland Mindanao, ultimately to Barrio Flamingo (then
part of Clarian), after the 1974 war in Jolo, when the
Philippines state attempted to crush Moro (from the
Spanish for “Moors”, that is, Muslim)
self-determination by brutal bombings, executions and
torture of civilians. In Mindanao and Moro society, the
Sama Dilaut are the lowest of the 13 ethno-linguistic
Moro groupings in Mindanao, looked down on by even the
Tausug (Tau sin Sug, the People of the Current),
themselves marginalised in their Sulu homeland and the
mainland. The Sama Dilaut are nomadic, in effect
stateless sea people, patronised by others at best,
struggling to survive when their fishing practices are
severely compromised, to claim their ancestral rights in
the sea but with only land-based legislation to support
the claim, and to beg for a subsistence living as far
away as Manila. The Government is intent on resettling
them on land (an NZAID project is supporting their
resettlement in north-eastern Luzon, north of Manila). On
the phone Mucha referred to such resettlement hamlets as
“captive villages”.
US Military Presence
US troops are in the area, based near Zamboanga City and
in the Sulu islands, but increasingly active throughout
Mindanao (as well as in other parts of the country now).
This area is the base for the Philippines’ theatre
of Bush’s “War On Terror.” They have been
on the ground in the south – more than 6,000 of them
at present - since immediately after 9/11, when Gloria
Macapagal-Arroyo and George Bush made an agreement,
suiting both of their interests (dealing to the Moros,
the “War On Terror”) and contravening thereby
the terms of the 1987 post-Marcos Philippines
Constitution. See Herbert Docena’s article elsewhere
in this issue about the covert permanent presence of US
Special Forces in the southernmost islands of the
Philippines. Ed.
On the phone to me, Mucha ironically referred to the
troops being in Zamboanga City doing “community
service”. I was later to find out that the name for
the US Marines’ work (in full battle dress) on
roads, the airport and port in Jolo was Project
Bayanihan, the same term I heard elsewhere, such as when
the communities of Villa Real were voluntarily working
together building a road or when solidarity contributions
were made to organisations like that of the militant
peasants, Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP). Here
though, US military “community service” began
about two months after the AFP/US assaults on Jolo that
infamously massacred a family, amongst others. A
politically active woman from Jolo later pointed out this
infrastructural work on roads into the hinterland, an
airport and a port, would be useful if – or when
– they try to land more troops to go against Muslims
in the not-too-distant future.
Mucha and Ishmael, her husband, warmly greeted me at the
airport, and after a meal toured me around parts of
Zamboanga City, some of which I would see closer later
on. SouthComm – the Southern Command base of the
Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), amongst other
things the strategic base for Philippines, Australian and
US military cooperation; the then head of the NZ Army,
Major-General Jerry Mateparae, was to receive an honour
guard there a few weeks later *. The nearby entry to the
Balikatan base, where US troops were based – named
for the series of continuing “exercises”
designed to make it look like they weren’t really in
the Philippines. A US ship was unloading
“equipment” at the port (weapons, I was told by
a policeman later on); but not much other direct sign of
US presence. * For details of Mateparae’s September
05 visit to the Philippines, see “NZ Military Should
Have Nothing To Do With The Philippines”, by Murray
Horton, in Kapatiran 25/26, December 2005, which can be
read online at
http://www.converge.org.nz/psna/KapNo25n26/kap25art/art122.htm.
Mateparae has since been promoted to NZ’s Chief of
Defence Staff. Ed.
A “captive village”, Sinunuc, on the outskirts
of Zamboanga City, on the water’s edge. A golf
course, the last bit of traditional Moro land in the city
(with only one tomb left to them), now subject to a
customary claim. A hint (it was a Sunday) of the chaotic
traffic – pedicabs, motorbikes, trucks – that
meant dangerous living for locals. A Filipino-Turkish
Tolerance School, with missionary teachers. Interesting
juxtapositions of Muslim and Christian institutions.
Military checkpoints every few metres, after dark.
We briefly visited a flash conference centre (restaurant
and halls) called La Vista del Mar, set on public
foreshore land used as if owned by the Lobregat dynasty.
The colourful sails of the Sama Dilaut vinta boats are
rarely seen on the waters now - but are co-opted by the
elite and mainstream society as decorations. There are
large vinta sails on poles (“without the
boats!” the Sama and their friends note ironically)
at this centre for the elite. The Fiesta week for
Zamboanga City uses these symbols widely - all without
regard for the people they actually represent, who are
actively despised or at best patronised. Echoes of our
own NZ colonial history, and of aspects of our current
relationships. A large trapped tortoise in a corner of
water, pathetically trying to get to the sea, is an image
for the Sama that stays with me.
The Lobregats control the Coconut Federation - which gets
substantial government subsidies, and has plantations in
most wartorn areas of Mindanao. Mother, Maria Clara, is a
former Mayor of Zamboanga City; son Celso is still a
national Senator (actually this mother and son tandem
tends to alternate in the Mayor and Congressman’s
roles). The Lobregats are associates of ousted President
Joseph “Erap” Estrada* who, in 2000, declared
“all-out war” in Mindanao against Moro
activists. When Maranao activists seized coconut
plantations in their area from the Lobregat dynasty, and
were under Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF)
protection, the Lobregats opposed a ceasefire and peace
talks, wanting the “all-out war” to continue.
*Estrada was President from 1998-2001. He was removed,
half way through his term, by People Power 2, a popular
uprising against the massive corruption of his regime. He
remains nominally in custody and very nominally on trial
on the capital charge of plunder. His Vice President,
Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, took over his job – and
nothing changed. Ed.
Estrada’s “all-out war” (now pursued by
Macapagal-Arroyo) had its own climax in Zamboanga in
December 2000. A complex called Cabatangan, north of the
city, was owned by the regional government of the ARMM
(Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao) but the national
Government wanted it back. MNLF Integrees (comprised of
MNLF fighters “integrated” into the national
army, the AFP, after the 1996 Peace Agreement*; these
ones were mainly Sama Ba’ngingi, landbased Sama
related to the Sama Dilaut) were protecting the complex.
While they were having the traditional dawn meal (sahur)
the AFP attacked with bombing and mortars, under the
unlikely excuse that these soldiers were about to lay
siege to Zamboanga City itself. A pre-emptive attack
(sounds familiar, Mr Bush?). Trying to escape, the
Integrees in desperation took hostages - all this watched
live on national TV, with the AFP’s propaganda team
providing their own version of the truth. Eventually the
hostages were released, the former MNLF were allowed to
leave, but they were then ambushed and killed down the
road. As the families of the soldiers were at risk should
they identify and claim the bodies of their dead –
with that inability being a source of great shame to them
- the bodies were paid for (!) and picked up by Salaam, a
Muslim Peace NGO. *The 1996 Peace Agreement between the
Philippines government and the MNLF ended the war waged
by the latter since the 1970s, and established the ARMM,
which offers very limited “autonomy” in what is
the poorest region of the Philippines. The Moro Islamic
Liberation Front – MILF – which split from the
MNLF decades ago, continues the armed struggle for an
independent Islamic state. Ed.
Lumah Ma Dilaut
I stayed in the office of Lumah Ma Dilaut in the barrio
of Santo Nino within Barangay Putik (the civic area,
named for “mud”. Barrios and barangay are the
basic units of local government). I slept upstairs beside
the Islamic prayer room, across from “the
Museum”, an educational display of Sama Dilaut life
– aware of the heat, the echoes of the ancestors,
and the barrio noises of the very early morning, familiar
no doubt to many of you…
An upper room
in Barrio Santo Nino, Putik.
Rooster call. An echoing call.
Sweepings - a coconut broom.
Jeep passing.
Child call.
First rooster. Obedient echoes.
Bun-seller’s horn. Moving. Fading.
Child Caspar’s repetitive mantra.
Motorcycle.
Roosters.
Background traffic din.
Sweepings.
Male shout. Repeated. Angry.
Small dog bark.
Dominant rooster. Scolding.
Car horn.
Distant bun-seller.
Sweepings.
Child.
As usual.
Day waking in the barrio.
A tall electric fan was essential equipment. I carried it
between the office and the nearby kadday (eatery), much
to the amusement of the people of the barrio. The food at
the kadday and the Basilan coffee, prepared by Dayan and
Anne (young Sama women, affiliates and since then
teachers and administrators with Lumah), were very
welcome.
The Killing Of A Pedicab Driver
The kadday was also a small store for the two to support
themselves. Jerry Masa used to come there for his
cigarettes “on tick” (credit). He drove a
sikadsikad, a pedicab named after a conch shellfish, both
shell and pedicab moving with the same rhythmic sway. He
was killed by an AFP Marine a hundred metres away on the
second day I was there. The other drivers – although
financially very vulnerable, having to rent their
bicycles from “The Man” for 60 pesos* a day,
normally (I was told) silent in the face of
marginalisation – went on strike. Rented their
bicycles then lined up, grimfaced, arms folded. * The
2007 exchange rate is around 31 pesos to $NZ1. Ed.
The ripples go underground in the barrio
No protests, no screaming for police,
No scales of justice to tilt...
But the message passes quietly
The old man driving his sikadsikad
The old man getting his two cigarettes
from the village store
The old man, widower, with a place in a family
Was shot dead by a Marine
whose shiny motorbike was nudged
in the confusion of traffic -
shot for existing
for taking up space.
And the ripples surface
in the huddles at corners
in the quiet watching
and in the line of sikadsikads and drivers
at the entrance to the barrio.
An old man killed.
The sikadsikad drivers are on strike.
Lumah Ma Dilaut is a small organisation working alongside
the nomadic Sama Dilaut sea nomads. The
organisation’s name means A House in the Sea, an
image from their poled houses way out from land that I
was later to visit, and a metaphor for the Sama dream of
recovering their former identity and home. Lumah Ma
Dilaut concentrate on building up the Samas’
capacity by activities like the iskul-iskul, a form of
alternative informal education as the mainstream schools
largely fail to provide their children’s needs, as
well as working in mainstream schools to assist Sama to
survive and achieve there. The underlying issue though is
to strengthen the confidence and capacity of the
traditional leadership and the clans, who tend to get
pushed around by others. Lumah also works as the
community legal research partner with some foreign legal
assistance on an ancestral claim to the Sama seas (the
case if filed has the potential of establishing new
precedents in Philippines law which part-acknowledges
land-based ancestral title), and other issues of
importance to the Sama Dilaut.
On the basis of that relationship with the Sama Dilaut,
they also work more broadly. Legal advocacy with women on
crucial gender issues in both Lumad (indigenous) and
Shari’a (Islamic) law and social systems. A rights
focus for indigenous peoples. Research documentation on
domestic violence. Providing cohesion for the development
of a network of Lumad and Moro women through Mindanao
called Pesosan – women who can do anything men do;
they seem to consciously keep aside from the purely
political debates within Moro society (as an outsider, it
struck me that the current MNLF doctrine of Ulama* has a
patriarchal and monarchical structure of which the women
may well be cautious). A striking banner from one of the
Pesosan workshops, showing the hands and statements of
each of these women from different ethnic groups
affirming the woman’s shape at the centre, hangs in
the Lumah office. Lumah Ma Dilaut’s style appears to
me to be low key, respectful, participatory. * Ulama
– the project for establishing a pan-national Muslim
state. Ed.
They were also at the time coordinating a project called
ODA (Overseas Development Aid) Budget Watch. Their
impressive action research process was geared to upskill
grassroots Mindanaon women to assess where foreign
“aid” is going, what its impact was on their
communities, who benefited. They were creatively
inventing the methodology as they go, looking for
examples in evaluation reports done for the World Bank
and working backwards to match the report with what
happened in reality. Some academics they are working with
are good in their specific areas, but the women are
taking the project well beyond that. How do you teach
mainly illiterate women to analyse budgets? - don’t
ask academics (or me).
Resettlement
One of the first impressions I had, that first afternoon
touring Zamboanga, was of the resettlement villages
– a society of peoples shifted en masse by military
or the institutions controlled by the elite. Peoples
marginalised, kept at the edge. The shifting of peoples
for reasons of war. The reshiftings of IDPs (Internally
Displaced Persons, internal refugees) when the first
location doesn’t suit the powers that be. The
siphoning of Government monies from their intended target
- houses in one new village meant to be built for IDPs at
75,000 pesos each (less than $NZ2,000) are pathetically
underbuilt, well under their meagre budget, and hardly
used by those who were really supposed to be using them.
The shifting to inland places of IDPs whose home is the
sea, and to places where people have to walk long
distances for drinking and washing water. The
nation-state’s needs against the people’s.
The name Zamboanga refers to the pole the Sama use to
steer their longboats, and by implication is a place
where the sea nomads struck land and stuck their
sambuans. A shore-bounded area of land where there was
formerly a Sama Dilaut village, right on the edge of the
city, has been “reserved” for the expansion of
Zamboanga tourist attractions, an extension of the Fort
Pilar shrine, to be a grand promenade similar to
Manila’s baywalk, aptly called the Paseo del Mar,
and an echo of the Lobregats’ La Vista del Mar - the
village shifted and dispersed, but the land still unused,
awaiting the great plan to be enacted. The island of
Greater Santa Cruz not far offshore - a Sama village - is
planned by the city tourism authorities to be cleared of
people and houses to become picnic areas for the wealthy
(some of these already starting); maybe the displaced
Sama will be able to come back sell their crafts there
(!).
Mucha’s Sama Laminusa parents and family had to
leave Jolo, out in the Sulu archipelago, to come to the
mainland at the time of the terrible war there in 1974.
They were first placed by the Government closer to the
sea, but were then forced inland to what is now Flamingo
village – away from the sea and two kilometres from
the nearest water source. That was still the situation in
2005 – the promised pipes had yet to arrive, as well
as most other facilities, a marginalising of these
refugees that mirrors the lack of respect they receive
from the authorities and the wider population. And they
continue to be under armed AFP guard there, albeit in
this village a low key guard. In many ways, the Sama
Dilaut are resettled people. As well as the last
resisters against resettlement.
Sama Dilaut
For much of my detailed information about the Sama
Dilaut, I am indebted to Mucha and her stories and her
extensive writing.
The Sama Dilaut are the sea-roaming clans of the Sama
peoples, all of whom speak the Sinama language. Other
Sama clans are collectively named for their place of
origin (like the Sama Laminusa or Sama Ba’ngingi),
or more generally for being shore-dwellers or sedentary.
Newly sedentary Sama Dilaut tend to distinguish
themselves from the boat-dwellers, mainly because there
are a range of pejorative names and matching attitudes
(like “Badjao” or worse, like
“Luwaan”, “that which is vomited
out”, a common Tausug term for the Sama Dilaut) that
have been directed abusively at the Sama Dilaut, both by
the Tausug of the Sulu islands, and the A-a seddi
(“outsiders”) from lahat-bisaya (Christian
lands).
The nomadic Sama Dilaut have always been loosely
organised. Their relatively small clan units known as
moorages are matched with a fairly horizontal form of
social structure and a particular form of collective
fishing called pag-ambit. Loose organisation has had the
advantage of allowing them to maintain their
independence, in the eras of US and Spanish imperialism,
and even back into the days of the vibrant Muslim Sulu
Sultanate, which was in place in the Sulu islands since
1450, before the Spanish came. Other peoples – the
Tausug or Yakan, for example – were more tightly
socially organised and thereby fitted in and established
themselves within the Muslim political structure of the
Sultanate. For their part, other Muslim peoples told
derogatory stories about the Sama Dilaut and their
relationship with the Prophet Muhammad, possibly
reflecting irritation with the Samas’
independent-mindedness, their non-hierarchical and
lightly organised society, as well as their resistance to
being fully Islamic. Also, the Sama Dilaut do not
identify strongly with the BangsaMoro (Moro
nation’s) national identity.
While the Sama Dilaut are often regarded as nominally
Muslim, and they do have a belief in a Supreme Being,
they are rather animists. Their Supreme Being M’boh
Tuhan is distant and indifferent and does not require
their attention. However the ancestors (M’boh), as
well as the jinns (spirits), do require constant
attention and rituals; in a non-Islamic way, they control
illness, death and watch over the living. Their presence
is an active one for the people; the shore villages even
now are structured in a circle around the cemetery, with
the white and yellow flags there denoting the source of
political and social power for the clan (I am told in
some villages the mosque is also placed at that centre
too, reinforcing the connection of spiritual powers, but
I did not see such villages).
As one might expect of nomads, the loose organisational
structure of the Sama Dilaut has – I am told –
a very pragmatic and present day focus, with leadership
focusing around the moorings which small clans would
gather around. Elder leadership in the moorings or the
poled villages well offshore is now framed in terms of
the male Panglima and the female Pandaay (a shaman,
usually the oldest woman who is also the midwife) –
a white flag identifies her house amongst the lines or
clusters of poled houses. Through these two traditional
leaders, certificates of identity are issued (“I
know this child to be born to this couple…”);
through the Panglima Kapintale, for example, members of
the community in the Moro urban village Rio Hondo are
linked to Sangali village’s clan structure. This
type of leadership fits practically alongside the
leadership amongst younger people who are more flexible
to negotiate with the non-Sama A-a seddi or
“outsiders”. There is an oral process of
handing on the mythologised history of the clan and
community events to the next generation called katakata,
which happens during social occasions, but even with that
process people apparently do not name specific ancestors
more than three generations back – a reflection of
the looseness of their social organisation, as well as
the conflictual issues around their ethnic identity
referred to above.
While their loose organisation has meant the Sama Dilaut
have largely retained their independence over the
centuries, it has also had the effect of leaving the Sama
Dilaut vulnerable to external machination, and
ill-positioned to negotiate issues of economic, social
and political power in the wider society. Loose
organisation has had the effect of them becoming a
vanishing people. The effects of watch towers, the purse
seiners and partida arrangements provide cases at point.
The watch towers (palao – like little islands with a
raised hut) that I saw off the edge of Basilan Island are
used to define fishing areas, particularly good squid and
cuttlefish areas, or seaweed farming areas. The towers
are usually controlled by Tausug, Sama Ba’ngingi, or
Yakan families. The Sama Dilaut are blocked from those
fishing areas that they once traditionally fished, but do
not complain for fear of getting shot.
Large purse seiners (known as “haulboats”) have
dredged much of the waters and destroyed fishing
nurseries and stock for the Sama Dilaut (though Mucha
thinks there is still a viable fishing base possible out
in Sulu). The “haulboats” are
Government-licensed and encouraged, in contrast with the
small fishers who have to pay substantial fines for minor
technical transgressions, fines that they cannot afford.
The importance of Lumah Ma Dilaut’s work on the
ancestral claims, working to establish the Sama
Dilaut’s customary right to these waters, is in part
about redressing this damage and control. There are seven
recognised traditional Councils, and 15 Panglima, who
drive the ancestral claim work. The key according to the
Lumah people, is to get the people’s involvement.
There were however some dark hints of risks that the
Panglimas were taking by being involved.
Partida arrangements are another huge problem for the
Sama Dilaut. Partida is a system of
“collectives” with small fishers and divers
having to join one-sided “partnerships” with
large companies (usually Tausug or Visayan), with some
practical assistance received but incurring debts to them
through a deceptive open-credit line, as well as having
to sell their catch to them at vastly reduced prices. For
many this had become the only way they could maintain
their fishing livelihood. In a rather terrible way, the
women and children are kept as collateral for these
terrible arrangements of debt contracted by the men,
should the male deep sea fishers not return. An extreme
version of selling one’s soul to the company store.
Further, the Sama are obliged to build their houses under
the businessman’s eye, so the women and children are
available to him at any stage; the nomads become tied to
the land. And should the whole collective (or moorage)
make a run for it, they will be chased by the
business’ thugs and sometimes summarily executed.
Sama Dilaut Villages
The villages I saw reflected a range of relationships
with the society around them.
Sininuc
This poled village is right beside the main road at the
north of Zamboanga, on the edge of the sea. It makes a
very neat picture; you could imagine tourist buses
pulling up here. But the attractive long pointed boats
are pulled up, unused; the men are not around, the place
struck me as lifeless and dispirited. A couple of the
women brought out their very colourful beautifully
crafted mats for show and for sale. For me the picture
had a sadness about it. And the women and children may
indeed be “tied down” there, as in the partida
arrangements.
At Sinunuc, the development base is called the Ahon
Badjao Centre, and is apparently poorly used by the Sama
Dilaut, Some time ago, some Government workers who
liaised with the Sama Dilaut in the past (like the old
Maori Affairs Department, maybe?) had an idea of working
for Sama Dilaut development. The phrase they used to
describe the concept was Ahun Badjao (a Sinama language
phrase for “uplifting the Badjao” or Sama
development). By the time the project came back with
Government directives and foreign funding it had become
named for a Filipino national language phrase: the Ahon
Badjao anti-poverty project – meaning something
quite different, namely to “fish the Badjao out of
the sea”. The name says it all. It looks good in
concept, but without being applied in the context of the
Sama Dilauts’ sea-nomadism as a valid way of life,
it only serves to haul these people up to resettle them
on land, and thereby ultimately joining the poorest of
the poor land dwellers.
Sangali And Da’ap
To the south east of Zamboanga City is Sangali and the
more traditional village of Da’ap. We had two
offduty policemen, friends, who kept us company for
security, as well as Edga Juaini, the officer for the
National Commission for Indigenous Peoples (NCIP), who is
part of the reason for the trip to Sangali, Da’ap
and Badjao Hope. The Barangay Captain at Sangali (local
“mayor”, sort of) knows the party is due to
discuss issues with him, and has made himself scarce. So
we head down to the waterside to Da’ap.
This village was formed from a yet-earlier surge of
resettlement, after World War II, as the new Philippines
nation-state tried to control the nomads. But Da’ap
had become – particularly with the building up of
the cemetery at its centre – the Paglahat or
home-ground of the clan. They were established there at
this edge of the ocean. The village did not appear to be
full but it was alive, a number of the boats were
evidently out in the waters. It became gradually clear to
me why the resettlement village we were going to had been
built further out – the port that Da’ap sat
beside had been planned to be significantly expanded, and
the terminal would require the land upon which Da’ap
was based, the village and the cemetery. A slow but sure
pressure to shift. We walked in the rain and on sliding
tracks out to the resettlement village.
Badjao Hope
Tumbutumbuan is the sea to the Sama Dilaut. The term
conveys an entity without boundaries; it is physical,
spiritual, cultural, human; it means “creation or
natural resources”. In sharp contrast, land conveys
restriction, it means mud and dirtiness to the Sama
Dilaut. This newish Government resettlement village, this
“captive village”, can often only be reached by
a long trek across slippery clay tracks. Its placement is
a pain to the sea nomads, in a way that may not have
struck its patronising Government constructors and their
Canadian government funder-partners for whom happy
stories are presented on each visit. I had some personal
sense of how different this was from the clean freedom of
the Tumbutumbuan of the nomads.
We walked in the tropical humidity and heat some distance
to the newish village on the corner of the port. Badjao
Hope – with a name that manages both to insult
(Badjao) and patronise (Hope) at the same time – is
a Government resettlement village, where some of the
people from nearby Da’ap have been relocated. To
some eyes it would have looked flash and neat; little
boxes of houses in three straight lines of maybe 20
houses each, together forming a U shape facing back from
the sea, all on poles. There was none of the organic
vibrancy of design of the residents’ home village
Da’ap back on the land, or of Tampalan on Malamawi
Island. In fact it had been poorly placed where the Sama
would not have put it, two houses having already been
washed away by the currents.
People at this Government village were in a real way
entrapped there. The Barangay’s low key policeman
was there keeping an eye open for houses that
weren’t being used. For example, the Barangay
Security Chief had told one woman, Panglima
Lasting’s daughter, that she was to lose her house
out at Badjao Hope because she kept going back and
staying for days at the village they had been
“resettled” from; but she needed to go back to
the cemetery at Da’ap as the shaman had told her
sick son to go and stay there to be healed by the
ancestors. A real contradiction for the mother.
The meeting with the Government agent, who was a
potential intermediary, the Panglima, and the Lumah Ma
Dilaut advocates – with a large number of interested
onlookers - canvassed a number of issues. Arguments about
that woman’s house. Arguments about spirituality
– the jinns and ancestral spirits will not dwell on
galvanised-ceilinged houses. Arguments about electricity.
And a strong sense of dependency, but framed in a
different way to my foreign ears; it was as if “we
have come here from our waters to keep you happy, now you
Government and authorities must supply our needs”. I
left somewhat disturbed with the implications of all
those discussions. And wondering whether the NZAID
village in Luzon would prove any better; I doubted it.
Tampalan
By fast ferry, Ishmael and Mucha-Shim took me to Isabela
City on Basilan Island; then by longboat to visit Lumah
Ma Dilaut’s iskul-iskul, an informal alternative
school, in a traditional Sama Dilaut floating village on
poles in Barangay Tampalan on Malamawi Island, offshore
from Isabela City. This was an awesome and moving
experience. And an introduction to Tumbutumbuan, the
physical-spiritual world of the sea. A brief insight into
their difficulties of maintaining their fishing and sea
culture. And a complete contrast to Badjao Hope, with the
treks through clay and mud; and being trapped in the
“fishnet” there.
Tampalan was a particularly large village, as far as I
could see. There was only water, and a few plank
walkways, between the houses jutting way out into the
straits between Basilan and Malamawi Islands. A wedding
celebration was in its third day at the edge of our view.
The boats were long prowed, driven by an outboard motor
and steered by a young man or boy with the sambuan pole
jammed into the shallower water and against the side of
the prow. They whisked around the houses that had their
own boats on racks, families seated in the lower rooms
which were open to the breeze and shady. The school at
the time was very basic, based in Panglima
Bulakkan’s billiards room, set up daily around the
covered billiards table. Monang the Lumah teacher would
have worked hard to make the teaching effective, I
imagine. Recently Mucha has emailed to celebrate the new
school that Lumah has opened in Tampalan, in their own
building functioning also as the Centre for Living
Traditions for the Sama communities.
We also responded to an invitation to visit the Barangay
Captain Sukarno’s office not far from the small
wooden mosque, recognising thereby the balance and the
tension between authorities. My impression had been that,
even with goodwill, the role of the young Islamic
professionals (I gained a bit of a picture of the Islamic
mindset against the indigenous system with its animist
roots) and the Barangay Captain was problematic in the
way they related to the traditional leaders. I had
listened to discussions between the Panglima and Barangay
Captain around the demarcation between civil and
traditional authorities (the Panglima has recognised
authority in marital matters; the Captain has legal
authority in civil disputes).
Back in Isabela City on the long papet (motor) boat,
before leaving on the ferry for Zamboanga, I presented
two matau (Maori bone carving in the shape of a fish
hook) carved by Carwyn Ngere of Ngati Wai to Panglima
Jaabao Limpasan and Panglima Bulakka Injirani – the
two traditional leaders we had travelled with from
Isabela (Bulakka is the senior Panglima of
Tampalan’s Council of Elders). In a sense, I was a
vehicle for a gift from the People of the Water to the
People of the Water. In the context of the tensions
mentioned above, it was good to have an opportunity to
recognise the indigenous social structures and the
traditional leaders later on by presenting the matau
amulets. They were movingly articulate in response:
“This never happens!”
We were watched carefully during our time in Tampalan,
Malamawi, and in Isabela City, Basilan. Malamawi Island
in one sense is the centre of the Abu Sayyaf (Abu Sabaya,
a key Abu Sayyaf leader, had his house on the island, in
Barangay Carbon adjacent to Tampalan). For one thing, it
seems people were checking out if I was a USAID worker,
which would have been quite problematic – aid and
Marines being two faces of the same agenda. I had
automatically been responding to the random calls from
the wharves that I was definitely not “Milikan”
(American). It was a couple of weeks later that Mucha
told me that I was the only white to have visited
Tampalan since about 1992: “Thank you for your
courage, and for trusting us,” she wrote dryly.
Abu Sayyaf
Abu Sayyaf (“Bearer of the Sword”) Group were
originally youthful idealists in the Moro National
Liberation Front (MNLF), who challenged the MNLF
leadership when Nur Misuari began what they saw as a
compromised path with the Government. Founded in the
mid-1980s by Abdurajak Abubakar Janjalani, and followed
by his brother, Khaddafy Janjalani (recently killed),
their aim was to propagate Islam through jihad. Not long
afterwards, the US Central Intelligence Agency took Abu
Sayyaf and other Muslim fighting groups from different
countries to Afghanistan to fight the Russians there,
until the war was over in early 1989 and they were
returned to Basilan. The Abu Sayyaf is widely known to
have been infiltrated by the Philippine military and so
was probably quite manipulable, though some stayed loyal
to the idealist strand of their roots.
Interestingly, Abu Sayyaf had been demanding that foreign
vessels and big fishing boats be banned from the Sulu
seas – a call that would in the long term
potentially enable the small Sama Dilaut fishers to fish
again with their smaller boats in areas around Basilan
and Sulu, and without relying on the large boats for
partida patronage.
Abu Sayyaf are infamous as brigands, noted for their
brutality and for taking hostages in the Sulu
archipelago. However – with other Moro liberation
groups being either mainstreamed or, like the Moro
Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), in peace talks with the
Government – Abu Sayyaf seem to serve as scapegoats,
as “terrorist” excuses for the Philippines
government, the AFP and their foreign US and Australian
“advisors” to maintain an active military
presence amongst the local Moro peoples. Abu Sayyaf
(sometimes now alongside the pan-Islamic Jemaah Islamiyah
group) serves as a Philippines government excuse for the
local “War On Terror” and for huge AFP and
foreign military buildup, in much the same way as the US
uses Al Qaeda as an excuse for military intervention
wherever it suits them. That military activity, however,
has been responsible to date for the killing of scores of
Muslim civilians, massacres, several incidents of
torture, and the displacement of tens of thousands of
people.
When I was in Mindanao, upgraded US and UK travel
advisories about Zamboanga City and the Sulu archipelago
referred to Abu Sayyaf activity. Posters at Zamboanga
airport and in the Barangay Captain’s office at
Tampalan floating village showed individual faces of some
24 Abu Sayyaf Group, with eight “crossed out”
(killed or captured), with a red X.
A week after I had left Zamboanga City, an alleged Abu
Sayyaf member (supposed to have been involved in bombings
in 2002 that killed 12 and injured 70 in the city) was
arrested there in a shoot out. As I will instance later
on, I note how easy it is for the Government or Army
– or the US, for that matter – to claim that
opponents or non-combatant civilians are “Abu Sayyaf
terrorists”. According to the International
Solidarity Mission Report of 2005 – and in
particular the report of the Team of which Nelson’s
Mary Ellen O’Connor * was part - 130 of the 400
inmates in the appalling conditions of Metro Manila
Detention Jail in Camp Bagong Diwa in Bicutan, Taguig,
are labelled “Abu Sayyaf”, which in practice
means that almost all of them are taken without warrant,
uncharged, tortured. Moro prisoners face insulting
discrimination every day, even in the process of getting
food. In March 2005 27 Moro prisoners were murdered in
cold blood at this prison. * See “Moros Consigned To
Manila’s Slums, Rubbish Dumps & Prisons”,
by Mary Ellen O’Connor, in Kapatiran 25/26, December
2005. Ed.
Begging
The Sama Dilaut, while economically forced into it, are
not ashamed of begging, I am told. Their year has
built-in seasons of begging, where groups travel as far
away as Malate in Manila where I met them. Interestingly,
the older Sama Dilaut fishermen used to travel that far
for fishing. But these beggar communities mostly consist
of women and children, as the men often die young or are
crippled by the dangerous diving and fishing practices
they had been pushed to adopt. The women therefore become
the anchors for their dispersed community, as well as
handers-on of the traditions and negotiators with the
“outsiders”. A complex set of pressures behind
the begging phenomenon.
Begging is a feature of life here. I am aware of the
analysis and practical actions from that, that groups
like Lumah Ma Dilaut hold in relation to the Sama Dilaut
- for whom destruction and alienation are their recent
history; disenfranchisement and discrimination are
coupled with their reported attitude and situation of
dependence (reinforced by current practices like the
Government’s “captive villages” for the
Sama); and in particular no shame is felt with begging
and this practice is planned for on both a seasonal and
an ongoing basis. With all this (I think) in mind, the
activists I met would not give to beggars but rather
encouraged them to undertake alternatives. None of which
makes me think a begging life is at all easy, or not
based on real need.
Glimpses Of Moro Zamboanga And Sulu
In Zamboanga City, Moro people are written
“down” in the histories, the naming of places,
the framing and reporting of events. Places are named in
ways that reflect the dominant ideology. For example the
“good” (according to the Spanish colonisers and
the current elite who are their moral descendants)
Governor Alvarez and US General “Black Jack”
Pershing (who massacred thousands of Moros around 1907),
have flash plazas and statues to commemorate them.
General Alvarez (son of the Governor above, of mixed
Spanish and Moro parentage) who went across to the Moros
after he saw what was happening to them, has an unlit
tiny lane named after him, where muggings take place. The
high profile buildings and places in Zamboanga City
reflect the historical eras of Spain’s (up until
1898) or US (until World War II) empire.
Muslim small traders are reduced to, for example, selling
charity-donated goods. The city’s corporate powerful
and municipal leaders are pushing out the small Muslim
traders. There used to be a number of flourishing Muslim
markets in Zamboanga City – including the famous and
fondly remembered tax-free ”barter”. Now almost
only the Tabuh Sanao (the Dark Market) survives, and that
is under threat. The market’s counterculture is seen
as inimical to mainstream Zamboanga City, controlled as
it is by the elite.
I noted that Pesosan - the Lumad (indigenous) and Moro
women’s network - keeps aside from the specifically
political debates and configurations. I don’t think
this is at all because they don’t have a political
analysis, but for specific reasons. For instance, one
strand of internal Moro debates relates to the MNLF and
Ulama doctrine that the ideal would be to return to the
Sultanate structure, which the women see as hierarchical,
patriarchal, monarchical - and not therefore right for
women. Another debate also keeps them aside from that
sort of politics - the debate about whether BangsaMoro
(the Moro nation) includes non-Muslims as well as Muslims
– as these women are consciously working
inter-ethnically, Lumad and Moro. Moro themselves report
constant public confusion about peace talks between the
various Moro bodies and the Government, though it has
been said that this is a sign of maturity as more
“non-aligned” groups are involved in political
activity now.
ARMM
The Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) is really
a watered-down version of the 13-provinced autonomous
Muslim region first envisaged in the 1976 Tripoli
Agreement between the MNLF and the Marcos government, and
its successor, the 1996 Peace Agreement. To give a small
rather dated demographic picture of Mindanao: the 1995
Census reported that the total population was then
15,944,319, with roughly 5% Lumad, 20% Moro Muslims, and
75% Christian settlers. The shifting of displaced
Christian farmers from the Visayas and Luzon translated
the Spanish era landlord-peasant conflict into a
Moro-Christian one; US corporations building plantations
in the early 1900s contributed to the displacement of the
Moros. They moved from owning (with the Lumads) all of
Mindanao’s land to, by the late 1990s, owning less
than 17%, mostly infertile mountainous country, and over
80% of the Moros are now landless tenants. This is the
context that underpins the armed Moro groups that have
flourished in Mindanao.
Contrary to the Tripoli Agreement (brokered by Libya)
whereby only Muslims would vote on entry to the proposed
ARMM, everyone - dominant Christians and others –
was allowed to vote. The result was that several cities
(including Zamboanga City) voted out, and four poor
provinces and Marawi City opted into ARMM. The region is
now structurally split; Maguindanaon and Sulu Muslims are
separated. The region is decentralised with satellite
offices; has an ineffective bureaucracy; an expensive
running budget, and resources don’t get to the
communities; the political assembly intended to bring the
empowering Organic Act to life is reduced to managing the
budget for the offices; central governments’ laws
devolving power and security to the region were never
passed. In other words, ARMM could be said to be
toothless and designed to fail. All of which suits the
central government, and the US!
The de facto failure of ARMM (the compromise of the peace
process having failed) and the breach of faith by the
Government was one of the reasons for the recent
“renewed war” by Nur Misuari’s “real
MNLF” and the “Renegade Group” of the
MNLF, armed and active in the hills. Professor Misuari -
apparently first to use the older term “Moro”
in such a way as to unite the 13 Moro groupings; first
governor of ARMM in the optimistic days after 1996; now
prisoner of the Philippines’ state in Santa Rosa,
Laguna City, still uncharged, as far as I have heard -
according to some writers now seems to hold greater
influence than before. While MNLF sympathetic to the
Government are said to hold sway within the ARMM, the
ongoing BangsaMoro agenda named by Misuari and others is
being followed with passion. And the Government of Gloria
Macapagal-Macapagal-Arroyo continues to place US
interests above those of the BangsaMoro people.
Sulu
February 7th is an ominous date in Jolo Island in the
Sulu archipelago that stretches offshore from Zamboanga
City to close to Malaysia. Jolo was the centre of the
Sulu Sultanate that long preceded Hong Kong and Macau in
importance.
February 7th, 1776 is when the Spanish, jealous of
Sulu’s influence and economic power, laid siege to
this most significant commercial hub of South East Asia,
to finally bring it into submission and control its
economy. An event without which Hong Kong or modern day
Singapore may never have taken off.
February 7th, 1974 is when the Sulu War began with an AFP
attack ordered by President Marcos to deal to upstart
Moros. Jolo, the capital of Sulu, was burnt to the
ground, its economy again destroyed, and thousands of
refugees were scattered across mainland Mindanao and
beyond, including to Flamingo village mentioned above.
February 7th 2005 (a few months before I arrived in
Mindanao) is when most of a family (Tal and Nurshida
Padiwan – she was pregnant - their 14 year old son
Aldassir, and the children’s uncle Salip Faisal)
were massacred in their beds by members of the 53rd
Infantry Battalion of the AFP, a massacre witnessed by
three of the Padiwan children (seven year old Almujayal,
ten year old Madzrana, and three year old Aljeezmer) who
escaped and told their stories, but still have to be in
hiding. The MNLF Renegade Group tried to avenge the
massacre, so the Army then laid siege to the village and
bombed it, using Abu Sayyaf as the unlikely excuse.
This latest AFP attack followed years of their aerial
bombings, killings, artillery shelling of civilian
communities, forced evacuations, with schools and mosques
being taken over for military purposes – almost
always naming Abu Sayyaf as the excuse for these
violations. It also repeated a pattern of atrocities
coinciding with the various starts of Government talks
with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF, as in this
instance) or with the MNLF, thus providing an excuse for
blame, for heavy-handed military responses, and for
destabilising the peace talks and continuing the
“total war” against Muslims. Cynical Government
duplicity has meant another opportunity for peace being
lost, and their real agenda unmasked.
I spent some hours with a rather extroverted Muslim woman
from Jolo, who had been taken mysteriously at short
notice to the US for an exposure programme similar to
those noted below. She used the opportunity to ask hard
questions of the State Department in Washington about US
troops in Jolo (which they denied). Then, when greeted by
the Provincial Governor and US Community Relations
Officer Lieutenant Colonel Michael Donnelly on her
arrival in Jolo, she took the opportunity to lambaste
them about the US troops – those for whom Donnelly
was doing the PR job – that had in fact just landed
there. This is Sulu, where consortia of large foreign oil
companies are being encouraged by the Government and the
US to drill for oil in the rich Sulu basin; where US
troops are now based, their ”community service”
infrastructural work begun; and where the reformed MNLF
is in the hills and secure.
Of Dialogue, “Development” And
Domesticity
Along with my hosts I visited the Silsilah Dialogue
Institute (SDI) on the outskirts of Zamboanga City. The
Institute was founded in 1984 by Father Sebastiano
D’Ambra (whom I met briefly some days later). I had
a couple of hours with the Director, Bong Aranal. The
basic focus is on Christian/Muslim dialogue - with a
strong emphasis on spirituality, deliberately keeping
away from the political. Their special focus is however
promotion of peace dialogues, with a particular setting
that I would describe (even if the Institute
doesn’t) as “political” in the sense of
“Western-oriented”. Silsilah runs elementary
schools, seminars on the culture of dialogue, a public
library, and hosts public lectures including by
progressive thinkers like Professor Randy David (I noted
Bong used the derogatory term “Samal” when
speaking of the Sama Dilaut).
Some people I spoke with noted with concern a pattern of
passivism amongst young Muslim professionals in the
current era, and a move towards a type of spirituality
that leads away from “engagement”. The
Philippines Commission on Islam and Democracy, funded by
USAID’s Asia Foundation, is said to be composed of
activists of maybe 15 or 20 years ago, young Moro
ideologues with good credentials. They were the perfect
leaders for the future, but were felt to be constrained
and compromised now in this Government-sponsored
institution. The best young academics and lawyers were
being enticed to join programmes in the US – like a
particular former energetic human rights activist now
studying at Harvard (that said, I did hear that some
young people were holding true to a robust BangsaMoro
nationalism, even within some of the more mainstreamed
structures).
That trend is coupled with a US and international
emphasis on “moderate Muslims”. The language is
everywhere, and is seriously underpinned with USAID and
US philanthropic funding - another level of invasion,
working to domesticate Moro identity and nationalism, but
not an unfamiliar one, as people still remember the US
pensionado programme after the so-called Liberation from
the Japanese by US General Douglas MacArthur at the end
of World War 11. GEM (Greater Equity for Mindanao), for
example, is an intermediate funder set up by USAID with a
focus on “moderate Islam” and supporting the
more docile projects. “We are already within the web
(of anti-terrorism activity)” one canny Moro woman
observed. In that context, the more active, engaged Moro
workers, educationalists and institutes with whom I came
into contact, are being isolated, sidelined from
resources, and their public voice hindered.
Several people - including a participant, and a
progressive critic, and Bong – all spoke of the
Mindanao Peace-Building Institute, a USAID (read “US
government”)-funded collaboration between Capitol
University in Cagayan del Oro, Mindanao and Northern
Illinois University. Bong Aranal is the Regional
Coordinator of this. They take selected Moro and
Christian students from the ARMM areas (the five
provinces and two cities that are part of the Autonomous
Region of Muslim Mindanao), bring them to the US for a
short term placement in the likes of the State
Department, then follow up with them through the Cagayan
University afterwards. The panel selecting the
participants includes US academic Dr Susan Rassell and US
Embassy Cultural Affairs Officer Bruce Armitage –
this is “how the West was won,” I suppose.
The invitation to a senior academic I met to attend a
presentation about ACCESS Philippines Program, described
ACCESS as “an Interfaith Dialogue and Conflict
Resolution Program funded by the US State
Department… designed to bring young leaders from
Mindanao to America to learn about interfaith dialogue,
peer mediation and peace-building
initiatives…”. One informant spoke of the
“psywar” (psychological warfare) now endemic in
the academies. “How can we make USAID
hallal-ised?” one Muslim asked (hallal they
translated as “good”) - or is it possible at
all? Moros noted the strong connections between
development “Aid” and the aggression they
systematically experienced.
Different informants noted that the UN Development
Programme, and since recently the European Union, work
with the MNLF-related Moros; the World Bank works with
the MILF-related Moros - a division of spheres of
influence, but with a common agenda from all sides. There
are three BMWFs (BangsaMoro Women’s
Foundation/Federation/Forum) all based in Cotabato City.
I understand they are fronted by mainly elitist Muslim
women, each grouping of which have different funding
sources (UNIFEM* and the USAID’s Asia Foundation
link with the Forum, for example, which is active within
the Regional Legislative Assembly), echoing the divisions
mentioned above. * UNIFEM is the United Nations’
Development Fund for Women. Ed.
Of course some would argue that working through these
“split” organisations is in itself a legitimate
strategy. Other Moro women are outsiders to these
groupings. Some work strategically with them from
outside. All matters for legitimate debate. Still, from
my limited perspective, I can see why some women choosing
to stay clear of political engagement with the BMWFs is a
legitimate option. And the limited perspectives that the
privileged amongst us all might have.
Muslim Villages
Baliwasan is a Muslim village stretching the length of
the shadow of the old and the new PhidCorp (Philippines
Development Corporation) oil refineries and winding
through a cluster of other highly polluting industries.
While there is some “civil society” opposition
in Zamboanga to such pollution, and some organising, it
is the Moro poor whose water sources and fishing seas and
air that are fouled here. This village was set up here,
prior to the industries, for earlier
“resettled” waves of internal refugees. The
little that they have access to is now being steadily
destroyed, along with the environment itself.
“Quadruple bottom lines” are nowhere near the
civic agenda.
Shabu – methamphetamine - is prevalent, and related
random violence, making life further difficult for
ordinary people in Baliwasan and other poorer Muslim
barrios. Nice bourgeois anti-drug billboards don’t
deal with that at all, and the Police won’t actively
support the victims of crime (I am conscious of that
being true in my experience in poorer “brown”
suburbs in NZ too). I did visit the barrios of Baliwasan,
Santa Barbara and Salam, but was kept out Santa Catalina
and Rio Hondo by my Moro hosts. I was told it wasn’t
a good idea to go through any of these barrios after 3pm
or so anyway, as you would likely be “taxed” by
the drug-users, or attacked by “crazies” on the
road. On May 30th. 2005, some six weeks before I was
there, the barrios of Santa Catalina and Santa Barbara
were on fire.
Each of these urban barrios – like Rio Hondo and
Santa Barbara, tucked in dirty poverty behind the iconic
Fort Pilar, bastion against the Moros, and the shrine and
gold statue of Our Lady of Pilar – has substantial
military stations at each end, with an aggressive
attitude expressed by the armed soldiers towards the
inhabitants. Moro are threats, “the enemy
within” the nation-state. The extreme poverty, the
dirtiness, the crime, the lack of facilities, the armed
soldiers keeping people in, the historical removal of
people from natural sources of food, the current
destruction of their living environment: all typified the
Moro barrios that I saw. In contrast, even within the
context of lower living standards than in NZ, I could
tell that the Christian barrios were usually relatively
“upmarket”, clean and not treated with
suspicion.
The Muslim villages are one face of the internal Moro
refugees’ situation. They are echoes of the huge
squalid communities of Metro Manila, a number of which
are communities of Moro refugees – the Cotabato and
Basilan refugees who had fled their homelands to live an
extremely poor life on an unsanitary rubbish dump in
Tondo only to find that their shacks, the only homes they
have, were to be demolished in 30 minutes. The vicious
face of discrimination continues. The Moro resettlement
villages, the people, pushed yet again to the edge.
A couple of weeks after I had left Mindanao, I had an
interesting day at a particular Muslim market up in Metro
Manila, where all sorts of things could be found. That
day I read in the paper that the Chair of the Metro
Manila Development Authority claimed Muslim vendors were
planning to assassinate him because he was clearing the
sidewalks of illegal vendors. “They are no longer in
Mindanao. Metro Manila is a place where reason and good
character prevail” (!). In the “Christian”
nation state of the Philippines, the discourse against
the Muslims is everywhere. Commentators like Randy David
see the position of Muslims in the Philippines, and the
issues of Mindanao, as matters of real contradiction in
any journey towards national unity – issues that
need to be grasped with greater integrity.
Moro Strength
In writing of my experiences and learnings, I am
conscious that I have been often telling the stories of
marginalisation of the Moros or those closely associated
with them like the Sama Dilaut. As the International
Solidarity Mission 05 Report said: “We denounce the
systematic violence directed towards the BangsaMoro. They
are the targets of blatant discrimination, national
oppression, denial of land rights and historic
injustice”. None of that violence and discrimination
should be played down.
But I would also like to briefly though inadequately
acknowledge the other side to that story, celebrate the
strength of BangsaMoro identity and resistance that I
sensed in many people during my time in the Philippines.
In part this is I think to do with Islam and its people
who live it with devotion. This includes the commitment
to service that is part of the Islamic lifestyle, which
some enact as action for social justice and human rights,
and as work for peace that does not whittle down the
rights and integrity of the Moro peoples.
In part this is also to do with culture, in many ways.
One simple example: the inspiring traditional-style songs
and chants that call on people to follow the heroes of
earlier days and follow the long tradition of a people
battling for their rights and honour. Both religion and
culture provide a basis, I would suggest, with which to
reclaim Moro identity and hope for the future. I met a
number of Moro people who embodied that spirit.
Conclusion
Mucha, Ishmael and I exchanged symbolic gifts as I left.
I gave my Lumah friends the Foreshore and Seabed T shirt
– given to me by Green MP, Sue Bradford – from
Te Oneroa a Tohe’s (Ninety Mile Beach) “Hands
Across The Beach” celebratory demonstration in
February 2005. The similarities between the Maori call
for customary rights and the ancestral maritime rights
claim Lumah are working on with the Sama Dilaut made this
seem appropriate. For their part, they had given me a
distinctive T shirt from a Muslim learning centre in
Jolo, with a slogan reflecting the Muslim commitment to
service and peace.
The Moro experience gives a whole other look than that
from either the Left or the Right in mainstream
Philippines society. Activists from the Left have had
different views from – and sometimes clashed with -
the BangsaMoro nationalist movements. But it is also
important to acknowledge that the Moro and in a specific
and extreme way the Sama Dilaut are marginalised in
mainstream society, and their interests are seen as
counter to the nation-state of the Philippines, and that
State’s co-option into what can only be called US
imperialism. The US presence in Mindanao threatens to
further separate the Lumad, Moro and Christian
communities. The Christians often openly welcome the US
presence, and historical religious prejudices resurface.
Other forms of cross-cultural cooperation are needed to
counter the US influence.
I read in the Philippine Daily Inquirer of a departing US
“diplomat” being quoted as saying that he and
the US were worried about foreign terrorists and local
Muslim militants in Mindanao, saying “parts of
southern Mindanao could potentially become another
Afghanistan”. While the Philippines government
mildly demurred, saying that they were in control, the
rhetoric of course was designed to keep US forces with a
foot in the door in Mindanao. A Moro informant in
Zamboanga told me that World War 111 would begin in Sulu.
Whether you think that is exaggeration or not, we need to
watch carefully the space of Sulu, and of Mindanao.
Tim Howard, of Whangarei, is a PSNA member and
regular writer for Kapatiran. He is a pakeha social and
Tiriti justice worker. In 2005 he spent a month on an
exposure tour in Manila, the Cordillera, Negros and
Mindanao. This was his first visit to the Philippines.
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