This may sound a little insensitive---questions that maybe misinterpreted as a justification of a violent action. But just the same---these questions were raised in the midst of the recent bloody bombing in Cotabato City yesterday.
What about the attacks on civilians in evacuation center? Is that not a cause of alarm for government? Who will investigate these attacks?
The one who raised these questions was Eid Kabalu, spokesperson of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) reacting to the bloodiest bomb attack that hit Mindanao in recent weeks killing 5 people and wounding 45 others last Sunday at a lechon store outside the Cotabato Immaculate Concepcion Cathedral.
According to police investigators the bomb that exploded was homemade and that the explosion was triggered by a cellular phone. Immediately after the bombing, two people were taken in for questioning and is now still under tactical interrogation.
The Armed Forces of the Philippines had pinpointed to the Special Operations Group of the MILF as the perpetrator of the Sunday bomb blast in Cotabato.
“We condemn the bombing and we are confident that if only police investigators will stick to the evidence they gather on site, they will come to the conclusion that the MILF is not behind the bombing.There is a bigger agenda here and Mindanao is just a take off of that plan, designed by others and not the MILF” said Kabalu and even referred to a statement made in the media by former House Speaker Jose De Venecia that the recent bombings could be the handiwork of government itself, as a preliminary scenario to the declaration of an emergency rule or Martial Law.
“Si De Venecia nga yun ang sinabi, pero kami, hihintayin namin ang resulta ng opisyal na imbestigasyon and we are confident we will be vindicated in the very irresponsible allegations made by the AFP that the MILF are the ones behind the bombings in our own area.”
It doesn’t make sense explains Kabalu and raised the question What they will gain from launching a bomb attack?
In an interview with this reporter adding that the unfortunate incident near a Catholic Church in a way eclipsed another issue of atrocities directed towards the civilian population of many provinces in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao especially in the province of Maguindanao.
“Nobody seemed to take notice about the fact that civilians in evacuation centers are crying for help, complaining that they are now direct targets of the military,” Kabalu lamented.
In one evacuation center in Maguindanao last June 30, in the remote part of Libutan town to be exact, journalists from Metro Manila and various cities in Mindanao discovered the case of 7-year old Fahidza Kajar, who according to her family and the evacuees was a victim of a shrapnel of a 105 Howitzer Bomb of the Philippine Army.
According to Fahidza’s brother Mario, her sister was sleeping at around 8 in the evening, tucked in bed in a makeshift shelter they occupy at the Libutan Evacuation Center when the bomb exploded just a few meters away from the camp itself, shrapnel hitting the girl in an instant.
With her right leg and foot bandaged, Fahidza was carried by her elder brother Mario who was visibly surprised and thankful when he saw two elf-trucks full of members of the media and some human rights workers from various non-governmental organizations numbering to almost 60 arrived in their remote evacuation site.
In Filipino Mario said,” Mabuti nakarating kayo para makita ng gobyerno ang kalagayan namin dito, lalo na yung nangyari sa kapatid ko. Sana maipagamot man lang siya ng tama, hindi na kami umaasa ng hustisya, magamot lang ng tama para maligtas sa impeksiyon, okey na sa amin.”
The incident according to Mario took place eleven days prior to the media visit in their evacuation camp in Libutan.
On the verge of tears, Mario clutching Fahidza on his arms asked the military if they have now become the targets and not the MILF. “Bakit nasa evacuation na kami, binobomba pa rin kami?” Not used to seeing strangers and her first time to see cameras focused on her, Fahidza did not say a word and hid her face most of the time by burying it on her brother’s chest.
On the same day, June 30, a media briefing to the media by the 6th Infantry Division of the Philippine Army provided the answer as to why the civilians in evacuation centers feel they now have become direct targets of the military.
In a briefing recorded by the NGO workers and media, the 6th ID through its spokesperson Col. Jonathan Ponce said they “consider and look at the civilians in the evacuation centers as reserve forces of the MILF, in other words, part of the MILF itself.” Ponce during the briefing even said that some MILF fighters pretend to be evacuees.
Evacuees in various parts of Central Mindanao still number to more than 300,000 individuals have been living in makeshift camps, schools turned into a mini-community for more almost a year now when the encounters between the MILF and the military erupted beginning in August of last year following the Supreme Court’s rejection of the legitimacy of the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain signed by representatives from the Government of the Philippines and the MILF.
In the last quarter of 2008, the number of internally displaced persons in the Philippines at 600,000 plus individuals, many in the Central Mindanao provinces like Maguindanao even surpassed the number of evacuees in countries like Sudan and Kenya based on the April 2009 Report of the Geneva-based INTERNAL DISPLACEMENT MONITORING CENTRE (IDMC).
Amina Anuka, one of the elderly women evacuees in Datu Gumbang in Piang Center told this reporter doesn’t know how old she is but thinks she’s probably 70 years old plus and that most of her years were spent running away from war.
Her greatest fear she said in her native dialect in Maguindanao, translated by another evacuee in Filipino, was that she would breathe her last in the evacuation center, not seeing the end to the conflict she experienced all her life.
While fear remains in her eyes, there is also that look in Anuka's eyes that conveys the reality that she has embraced everything as her fate, her life--her destiny.(end)
(end)
No comments:
Post a Comment