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Issue Number 29/30, May 2008
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Kapatiran Issue
No. 29/30, May 2008
STRENGTHENING INTERFAITH MOVEMENT AMIDST THE
PHILIPPINE GOVERNMENT’S ALL-OUT WAR CAMPAIGNS:
The Bangsamoro People’s Fight Against State
Discrimination And Oppression In The Philippines
- Amirah Ali Lidasan, Secretary-General of the
Moro-Christian People’s Alliance; Convenor,
Initiatives for Peace in Mindanao (InPeace Mindanao)
Like most of you, we Muslims in the Philippines want
peace and unity to prevail amidst diversity of religions
in our country. However, there are some factors or
circumstances created by our Government that makes the
path to peace seem rather distant. I belong to the 13
ethnolinguistic groups of Islamised national minorities
in the Philippines, collectively known as the Moro
people. We live mostly in the southern part of the
Philippines, dispersed in the second major island,
Mindanao. We comprise about 8 to 10% of the 86 million
Philippines’ population. Elsewhere in the country,
we inhabit mostly rural and urban poor areas in the other
islands of Luzon and Visayas.
Since my childhood, I have witnessed the sufferings of
our people. Often I would hear stories from my
grandparents about how bravely our ancestors fought
Spanish and American colonialism. The Spaniards were the
ones who coined the term MORO* to describe the Islamised
tribes who were resistant to Christianisation and
colonial rule. The term Moro, which was then a derogatory
word to describe the Muslims, was used by the future
generation of Moro people to signify defiance. *The
Spanish called the Arabs “Moors” and later
applied that name to all Muslims. Ed.
I was born at the time of the 1970s and 80s’ martial
law, when the Philippines became a battleground for the
fascist ruling of the late President Ferdinand Marcos, at
the time when Mindanao became the battleground of his
Administration’s counter-insurgency measures against
Moro minorities and national liberation movements (namely
the New People’s Army of the Communist Party of the
Philippines, which has been waging an armed struggle in
Mindanao, and throughout the Philippines, since the late
1960s. Ed.).
It was during martial law that the Moro National
Liberation Front (MNLF), the biggest Muslim libera-tion
movement in the 70’s, was esta-blished as a response
by the Moro people against the series of military
campaigns of the Philippine government against our people
who fought land grabbing schemes such as State land
occupation and resettlement programs for landless
pea-sants. Scores of Moro people died in the Jabidah
Massacre, Pata Island Massacre and other similar
genocidal campaigns of the Government.
Marcos wanted to use covert force to seize the disputed
Borneo territory of Sabah which did, and does, belong to
Malaysia. Young Muslim men from the southernmost islands
were recruited for an elite unit within the Philippine
military, training in Corregidor, Luzon. When they found
out the true nature of their mission, codenamed Jabidah,
namely to fight their Muslim brethren, they mutinied. In
March 1968, all but one of them was massacred by the
military. The estimate of the number murdered ranges from
28-64. In February 1981, MNLF forces killed around 120
soldiers on Pata Island, off Jolo, because of the
military’s abusive behaviour. In retaliation, the
military killed around 1,000 of the island’s 15,000
population. Ed.
In the hinterlands, the MNLF were the Moro armed fighters
for the freedom of the Bangsamoro or the Moro nation. In
Manila, the country’s capital, they were supported
by hundreds of Moro youth who joined massive protest
demonstrations against President Marcos and the
declaration of martial law that affected millions of
Filipino and Moro people. In the years that followed, the
Moro people were thrown into a series of military
campaigns designed to stop the Muslim secession movement
in Mindanao and the need for the Philippine government to
take control of Moro communities for economic development
purposes.
The Moro People In The Autonomous Region
The Moro is composed of 13 ethnolinguistic tribes from
Mindanao and Palawan: the Maguindanaons, Tausugs,
Maranaos, Iranon, Yakan, Kalagan, Samal, Sangir,
Kalibugan, Molboganun, Palawanis, Jama Mapun and Badjao.
These tribes are united with Islamic belief and a shared
history and culture that can be traced back to the
pre-Spanish Sultanates of Sulu and Maguindanao. Most of
them live within the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao
(ARMM), a region recognised by the 1986 Philippine
Constitution and created by an Orga-nic Act to designate
provinces in Mindanao that are Moro/Muslim populated.
ARMM was a product of the Government’s series of
nego-tiations with the Moro revolutionaries in Mindanao.
The ARMM has a total land area of 13,435.26 sq km (4.5%
of the country’s land area), and is composed of six
provinces and one city, 98 municipalities which equals to
2,148 barangays. The six pro-vinces are: Maguindanao and
Sha-riff Kabungsuan where the Maguindanaoans and Iranons
predominantly live; Sulu where the Tau-sugs predominantly
live; Lanao del Sur and Marawi City where the Maranaos
are; Basilan is the home of Yakans; while Tawi-Tawi is
where the Samal, Jama Mapuns and Badjaos live (for more
on the latter, see Tim Howard’s “A New
Zealander In Mindanao: Amongst Sea Nomads and
Muslims”, in Kapatiran 27/28, April 2007, which can
be read online at
http://www.converge.org.nz/psna/Kapatiran/KapNo27n28/Kap27n28Art/art129.htm.
Ed.).
The other Moro tribes also reside outside of the ARMM
area: the Kalagans live in the Davao provinces, Sangir in
Saranggani province, Kalibugan in the Zamboanga
Peninsula, Palawanis and Molboganons in Palawan. The Moro
people are mostly farmers and fishermen, with Maguindanao
and Lanao del Sur as one of the biggest producers of rice
and corn, while Maguindanao and Sulu account for 1/3 of
the country’s fish production. Moros also engage in
coconut and cassava farming, while others are farm
workers in a banana plantation owned by a Moro landlord
inside the ARMM province.
While the ARMM provinces were identified as targets for
mining areas, the region cannot account for the ownership
of minerals found underneath and above ground. The
national Government is the one that leads the
explorations for mining and issues licences for mining
and logging concessions. The Philippine National Oil
Corporation, for example, started non-mining exploration
of Liguasan Marsh in Maguindanao. The 451,700 hectares is
said to have millions of barrels of oil and natural gas
deposits. Other mining areas are Maguindanao for nickel
deposits and the Sulu Sea Basin for another oil deposit.
These same places are where the intense fighting occurs
and where there is the biggest deployment of military in
the ARMM areas. This is where most of the US soldiers
were sighted conducting medical missions and other
socio-cultural activities.
The Making Of Muslim Mindanao
Before Las Islas Filipinas and the Philippine Republic,
our country was divided into the Sultanates of
Maguindanao and Sulu. The heart of the two sultanates was
a feudal system of leadership based on families, clans
and tribes. The sultanate had a hierarchical system of
leader-ship whose basis was signified by the amount of
land owned by a certain leader of the family, the datu of
the tribe and the sultan of all tribes. Other families
belonged to the armies of the datu and the sultan, while
the others were farmers and slaves of the sultanate.
The major tribe under the Sultanate of Sulu was the
Tausug tribe of Sulu, while in the Sultanate of
Maguindanao it was the Maguindanaons. The other tribes
comprising the vassals of the two sultanates were the
Yakans, Samal, Palawani, Molboganun, Jama Mapun,
Kalibogan and Badjao who were under the Sulu Sultanate,
while the Iranons, Sangir, Kalagan belonged to the
Maguindanaon Sultanate. The Maranaos had the Pangampong
system, a congregation of four major clans from the Lanao
area.
When the Spanish and American colonisers saw the
organised and fierce defence of both Sultanates, they
were reminded of similar Muslim people whom they fought
when they colonised Africa. Like the Moors of North
Africa, the Moro people were able to fight the colonisers
because at that time only the sultanate system was
organised politically and militarily. Because the
sultanate was the first feudal government in the
Philippines, the people had a sense of homeland to
protect and fight for.
During the American colonisation in the 1900s, the US
military govern-ment launched one of the most destructive
wars that left hundreds of people dead. The Tausugs of
Sulu experienced most of the massacres when the Americans
launched military expeditions in Bud Dajo in 1906 and Bud
Bagsak in 1913 meant to make the Sultanate surrender. The
integration system on the other hand was able to
“abrogate” the Sultanates as part of the
Philippine territory by establishing the Moro province
under the Bureau of Non-Christian Tribes. The Muslims of
Mindanao were ruled by American government, the
US-created Philippine Republic using the Constitution as
the basis of its laws, disregarding the common laws of
tribes and the Islamic religious laws.
The Constitution and series of land policies gave license
for the Ameri-can and Philippine governments to get the
ancestral lands of the Moro people through a series of
land laws such as the Public Land Act which disregarded
previous ownership system of land of the Moro people. It
practically placed all the lands in the hands of the
Philippine government, which in turn classified it as
frontier lands and offered them to big landlords and
transnational companies who set up fruit and rubber
plantations and logging concessions.
American-owned companies such as Sime Darby and Firestone
built rubber plantations in Basilan, while Dole and Del
Monte set up fruit plantations in the former Maguindanao
Sultanate. A tobacco plantation was also set up near the
Liguasan Marshland in Maguindanao. Foreign corporations
and big landlords from the Luzon and Visayas were able to
own large tracts of land, bringing with them farmers and
farm workers willing to work in their plantations for low
wages as long as they could own a piece of land in
Mindanao.
Through the numerous land decrees under the Philippine
Republic, the lands of the Moros and Lumads* in Mindanao
were offered to landless Filipino peasants from Luzon and
Visayas to take the heat off the Government as these
peasants organised peasant revolts against big landlords
and the Philippine government for land reform. *Lumads -
highland indigenous tribal peoples, neither Christian nor
Muslim, and distinct from lowland Filipinos. Ed.
Resettlement programs brought thousands of Christian
settlers in Mindanao, edging the Mindanao natives farther
away from their farmlands. As a come on, Mindanao was
called the “Land of the Promise,” with the
Government offering large tracts of Mindanao land for
landless peasants. To woo the Muslim population, the sons
and daughters of the former Sultanate were educated in
the US and in Manila under the American education system
to enable them to administer the Moro populace. The new
generation of leaders imbibed the politics of the
Americans - the election sys-tem and even the corruption.
The Moro areas in Mindanao were further divided among big
landlords and families, both Muslims and Christians, who
vied for governor-ships and representation in the
Philippine Congress. In their bid to win in every
election, the Moro congressmen issued laws that changed
the boundaries of provinces based on the concentration of
Mus-lim tribes and Christian settlers. This scheme
further concentrated ownership of land in the hands of
few Moro and Christian landlords who then became the
local leaders of Mindanao.
From Jabidah Massacre To “War On Terror”
The 1968 Jabidah* Massacre is an incident that is
embedded into the collective memory of the Moro people.
It served as a wake-up call for them, that despite their
inte-gration into the State through politics, etc, their
brethren in the countryside were still being oppressed. *
Also spelt Jabbidah. See above for details. This was only
one of Marcos’ innumerable human rights atrocities,
and one committed years before he declared martial law.
Ed. Moro students at home and abroad organised themselves
and formed associations rallying Muslims in the call of
creating a separate nation or Bangsa for the Moro people.
Most of these youths and professionals went home to their
provinces and joined the fight of their families against
the Government’s land grabbing schemes through laws
and military expeditions.
When martial law was declared, most of these youths went
under-ground and were in military training in Sabah,
Malaysia. They formed the Moro National Liberation Front.
Some of them had already raided military detachments in
Lanao area while others had been planning to take over
major towns of their provinces. The Marcos dictatorship
responded by sending battalions and arming allied
landlords and politicians, bombarding Jolo, Sulu and
burning all its commercial establishments and houses. In
that genocidal war, more than 100,000 lives were lost.
Hence, the Organisation of Islamic Countries put pressure
on the Marcos government and a peace negotiation in Libya
was offered to the MNLF called the 1976 Tripoli
Agreement, which highlighted the Philippine
government’s recognition of 13 provinces as Moro
areas which would fall under an autonomous government.
Some MNLF leaders however did not like the outcome of the
agreement and broke away with the MNLF and created the
Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). The Marcos
Administration did not recognise the Tripoli Agreement
and instead implemented pseudo-autonomous provinces
putting in allied politicians as heads. The MNLF and MILF
con-tinued their warfare, splitting Moro provinces into
their camps and influenced communities. The succeeding
1986-92 Administration of President Cory Aquino, on the
other hand, continued to offer the Moro people an
alternative to the Bangsamoro Nation by establishing a
Government-controlled Autonomous Region in Muslim
Mindanao (ARMM) in 1989 and putting Government-allied
Moro politicians as governors and lawmakers of the whole
region.
The autonomous government however was rejected by both
the MNLF and the MILF. Hence, the next President, Fidel
Ramos (1992-98) offered another truce with the MNLF and
called it the 1996 Final Agreement. The MNLF Chairman,
Professor Nur Misuari, was offered the Governorship of
ARMM and the chairmanship of a development agency for the
Moro areas. The MILF, on the other hand, was offered a
ceasefire agreement that included the recognition of MILF
major and satellite camps.
Abu Sayyaf
However, another group believed to be created by the US
government’s Central Intelligence Agency emerged in
the Moro political scene that proved to be a stumbling
block in the peace negotiations. Composed of former MNLF
members, and some military intelligence, the Abu Sayyaf
was known as a terror group whose signature is the
kidnapping and beheading of Christian missionaries and
foreigners that they found in the Moro areas of Western
Mindanao. They are known to target Christian homes,
communities and churches. Despite being different from
both the MILF and the MNLF, in the bid to pressure both
organisations to sign agreements, the Abu Sayyaf was
often identified with Moro rebellion. Hence, when
President Joseph Estrada (1998-2001) called for an
all-out war against the MILF, the public was thinking
that they were responsible for kidnapping foreigners in
Basilan and Sulu.
This cycle of the MNLF and MILF being made responsible
for the atrocities committed by the Abu Sayyaf was
further used by the Arroyo Administration (2001- ) and
became the rallying call for her anti-terror policies. In
2001, scores of Moro civilians were killed, arrested,
tortured and detained in that name of fighting Abu
Sayyaf. For every bombing of public places and
commuters’ transportations, a Moro civilian was
presented as Abu Sayyaf. An MILF or MNLF lair is raided
on the pretext of pursuing Abu Sayyaf bandits. After the
9/11 tragedy and the consequent declaration of US
President George Bush of the “war on terror”,
Moro revolutionary groups in the Philippines were in
danger of being tagged as foreign terrorist organisations
just like what the US government did to the fellow
revolutionary group in the Philippines, the National
Democratic Front (the political wing of the armed
struggle, the NDF includes a number of groups such as the
Communist Party and the New People’s Army. Ed.).
Using the pretext of finding “terrorist cells”
and following reports of local Moro revolutionary groups
having connections with Al-Qaeda and Jeemayat Islamiya,
the international networks of terrorists consisting of
Islamic militants, the US and the Philippine government
signed several bilateral agreements tightening military
connections through a series of joint military exercises.
The Arroyo Administration offered Basilan and other
Muslim populated areas in Mindanao as venues for them.
The Philippine government used the “Moro
terrorist” hysteria to justify the passage of
anti-people policies and laws such as the Anti-Terrorism
Bill and the National Identification system. The Moro
people were portrayed as suicide bombers, kidnappers and
their firm grip on their religion, culture and ancestral
domain was portrayed as obstacles to the country’s
progress. The madaris (Islamic schools) were suspected of
training ground for terrorists, while the Azatiz (Islamic
preachers) were abducted and arrested in suspicion of
leading terrorist organisations and aiding known
international terrorists. The US “War on
Terror” reduced all struggles of the oppressed
people into “terrorism” - all revolutionary
forces and struggling people were tagged as terrorist
groups. It also disregarded the lifelong struggle of the
Moro people for self-determination, showing much
disrespect to the Muslims’ religion, beliefs,
culture and way of life.
Muslims, Lumads And Christians Must Unite To Fight
Aggression & Plunder In Mindanao
In Mindanao, the longstanding differences in culture and
religion be-tween Muslims, Lumads and Christians have
been utilised by the Philippine government as the focal
point in every military campaign it has launched.
Differences in religion and culture have been magnified
and used by some ambitious pre-sidents and military
officials for their military campaigns that would give
them “medals of valour” and appointments to
higher office. The sad fact is that even Moro
politicians, former rebels and warlords are in cahoots
with these plans.
Because of their glorious past during the Sultanate era
and because of the Government’s incessant drive to
oppress the Moro people in Mindanao, it is marked in the
consciousness of all Moro people that they can never live
under the present Philippine Republic. Always with the
desire of continuing the Sultanate form of feudal
governance that the American colonialists tried to
destroy, the Moro people would find ways to assert the
Islamic way of life in their communities and to defend
them from the Government’s and foreign
corporations’ incessant drive to plunder their
natural resources, despite being branded as terrorists.
Philippine history is replete with similar kinds of
struggle even from dominant Christian farmers and workers
who fought bravely against the plunder and oppression
from Spanish and American colonialism and against the
current regimes. Thousands were also displaced, killed
and branded as terrorists as the majority Christian
peoples defended their lands from plunder and fought
military campaigns by the Government. The issue of
landlessness and poverty is shared by both Muslims and
Christians in the Philippines. In the bid for control of
the resources in Mindanao, the past regimes sent military
expe-ditions and helped the big Christian landlords in
Mindanao to organise Christian peasants into vigilantes
and encouraged them to fight the Moros, hyping religious
and cultural superiority to breed hatred against Moros
and derogatory attitude against the Lumads.
But the still landless peasants saw through the greedy
plans of their fellow Christian landlords. As they fought
against the Moros and the Lumads, the landlords also took
away their lands, even killing progressive leaders and
religious missionaries who advocated land for the
peasants. Mindanao became a battleground on all fronts
during the Martial Law period. I was born during martial
law, I was born into a situation where hope of uniting
Moros and Christians and Lumads was so difficult and, for
some, unfathomable.
But as I grew up, there was a bloom of progressive ideas
and attitudes among the Mindanaon peoples. The
destruction of the war has opened the eyes of the youth
in Mindanao who were exposed to progressive ideas abroad
and in universities in Manila, that the people of
different faiths and culture can live alongside one
another, as long as they respect each others’
property, community, religion and culture, and most
important of all, the right to live. Hence, when the
current and most recent regimes whipped up religious wars
against the Moros in Mindanao, they failed to get the
sympathy of the majority Christian population. Instead,
the Moro people found a new ally in fighting against the
Government’s oppressive laws and campaigns.
The struggle of the Moro people’s right to land and
life is embedded in the struggle of the Filipino people
for democracy. The Moro people fight alongside the
Filipino people against colonial and national oppression
in the Philippines, and against the control of the
foreign economic superpowers, particularly the United
States of America and their local cohorts such as the
Philippine government, local big businessmen and
landlords.
Interfaith Movement In The Philippines
The mainstream interfaith organisations in the
Philippines deal more in uniting Muslims and Christians
in religious parameters. They are composed of religious
institutions concentrated in working for religious unity
and tolerance among religions. But these groups fall
short when it comes to criticising anti-Moro and
anti-people policies of the Philippine government, even
anti-people policies in general. Because they belong to
institutions, sometimes they provide religious
justifications for the militarist actions of the
Government against the Moro people and become apologists
for every Administration’s all-out wars and
anti-people policies.
The raging war in Mindanao became an issue of the
struggle of the Moro people’s right to
self-determination, correcting the wrong notion of a
religious war between the Muslims and Christians in the
Philippines. Catholic and Protestants joined hands with
Muslims in protest rallies to stop the war in Mindanao,
and the series of military campaigns of the Philippine
government against the Moro people. It was during martial
law that interfaith discussions bloomed in Mindanao due
to the efforts of the progressive Muslim, Christian and
Lumad youth. During martial law the Government’s
fascist policies did not distinguish between religions
and cultures; it categorised all people who criticised
the militarist policy of the Government as
anti-government, Communists and re-bels. Hence the
Government bom-barded all communities where there were
pockets of resistance against martial law.
The fall of martial law can be attributed to the combined
efforts of all peoples in the Philippines to fight
fascist policies. The experience of the people about
martial law binds them to a collective promise to unite
and deny a repeat of the mistakes of the past. Hence,
when the Estrada and Arroyo Administrations tried to whip
up a war in Mindanao, the people of Mindanao united and
reached out to the people in Luzon and Visayas who fall
short in understanding the situation in Mindanao. Before
Estrada’s all-out war, there were efforts from the
Christian and Muslim leaders in Manila to organise
interfaith discussions and movements calling for a stop
to the war in Mindanao.
The Moro-Christian People’s Alliance (MCPA), when it
was established in 1999, gave a venue for Muslims and
Christians in the Phi-lippines to focus their campaign in
shedding religious differences to fight for Muslim
people’s rights and welfare, even advancing towards
giving full support in the Moro people’s struggle
for their right to self-determination. MCPA also helped
in convening Kalinaw Mindanao (Peace in Mindanao), an
interfaith peace movement consisting of lawmakers, civil
libertarians, church people and Muslim religious groups
against the all-out war campaign.
MCPA was able to organise victims and their families and
worked closely with human rights organisations to provide
legal and paralegal services and progressive lawmakers to
initiate their fight against the war polices in Mindanao.
In 2003, the combined efforts of Muslims and Christian
leaders in Mindanao organised the Initiatives for Peace
in Min-danao, a broad and grassroots-based interfaith and
multisectoral peace movement consisting of interfaith
organisations and ecumenical institutions based in
Mindanao. It gathered Christian religious, Moro leaders,
Lumads, lawyers, academics, women leaders, health
professionals, artists, youth, local government
officials, small entrepreneurs and leaders of Mindanao
civil society.
The movement was a reaction to the overwhelming call for
peace to confront the Arroyo Administration’s policy
of intensive militarisation and witch hunting as a
consequence to the spate of bombings in key cities in
Mindanao. INPEACE Mindanao “facilitates
Mindanao-wide initiatives and supports sustained peace
negotiations with the view of achieving meaningful
reforms from the peace talks to benefit the peoples of
Mindanao”.
Truth Commission
INPEACE Mindanao, through the mandate of the 2003
Mindanao Leaders Peace Conference, conducted an
independent fact finding mission in 2003-2004 to
investigate the series of “mystery bombings” in
Mindanao. It formed the Mindanao Truth Commission in June
2003, a people-based initiative composed of bishops and
the religious, Muslim leaders, lawyers, academics and
professionals that conducted “public hearings”
and executive sessions to hear testimonies of victims,
their families and witnesses of the “mystery
bombings”. It also provided a venue for the victims
of the Government’s witch hunting and Moro men who
were used as scapegoats for the bombings.
The Truth Commission has submitted its findings and
helped in erasing the public hysteria against the MILF
and the Moro people as the masterminds of the bombings.
It also helped in uniting Mindanoans in their calls for
peace by providing venues for discussions and interfaith
activities. Forum and symposium, integration in Moro
communities, exposure programmes and fact finding
missions have been effective tools in breaking the
barrier of differences and historically rooted
animosities between two religions. Tolerance is a virtue
that is a must for all those who respect human rights and
interfaith endeavours. As we learn and fight for our
basic rights as people, we also come to accept and
understand each other’s differences in culture and
in faith.
For those who have and had an opportunity to understand
the plight of the Mo-ro people, they bring these stories
back to their own provinces. Through this, they are able
to educate others about the plight of their Moro brothers
and sisters. Eventually, they too, together with the
Muslims and Moro people in their communities, organise
among themselves to form advocacy organisations
supporting the struggle of the Moro national minorities
for land and right to self-determination. Peace is not
far behind for the Moro people if justice prevails in our
country. The Moro and the Filipino people, the
Chris-tians and the Muslims, must unite and fight side by
side in forwarding our collective rights as people of our
country and against colonialism and national oppression.
In turn, aspi-rations of the national minorities for our
right to self-determination must be recognised, respected
and forwarded.
Amirah Ali Lidasan is a Filipino Mus-lim woman from
Mindanao, Southern Philippines and hails from the Iranon
tribe of the Moro people. She is currently the
Secretary-General of the Moro-Christian People’s
Alliance (MCPA), one of the convenors of Initiatives for
Peace in Mindanao and ThreeAsOne Mindanao, and national
President of the Suara Bangsamoro Partylist Organisation.
Amirah toured New Zealand in October/November 2007 as a
guest of PSNA (see Murray Horton’s article on her
tour, elsewhere in this issue). This paper was prepared
for that.
Contact: c/o Kalinaw Center for Interfaith Resources,
#113 Francisco St., Juna Subdivision, Matina, Davao City,
Philippines 8000; ph/fax 0063-82-2994964; email:
suarabm@yaho
o.com, mindainpeace@yahoo.com
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