Central Mindanao tribes seek protection vs Kato, BIFM

COTABATO CITY, Philippines - Central Mindanao’s highland tribes are urging Malacañang to declare “protected areas” their lands where the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the bandit gang of Ameril Umrah Kato established lairs which soldiers took over last weekend after five days of offensives.

The abandoned hideouts of the Kato-led criminal gang and the MILF’s Camp Omar are located inside a sprawling 12,000 hectare mountain range, which is a known domain of non-Muslim highland communities, and surrounded by Maguindanao’s adjoining Guindulungan, Datu Saudi, Datu Unsay, Shariff Aguak, and South Upi towns.

Timuays (chieftains) of the ethnically-related Teduray, Teduray-Dulangan, and Dulangan-Manobo tribes in the adjoining provinces of Maguindanao and Sultan Kudarat said in a press statement Monday that they want to “freely thrive in peace” in their enclave, where Mount Firis, a centuries-old tribal sanctuary, is located.

Fierce clashes erupted in the surroundings of Mount Firis last week as soldiers drove followers of Kato away from the area following their bloody incursions on nearby five Maguindanao towns that started midnight of August 5 lasted for a week.

Tedurays have been performing their religious rites atop Mount Firis even before the Spaniards came in the 16th century to spread Christianity and long before Sharif Mohammad Kabunsuan, an Arab-Malay prince from Johore, arrived at the Pab-paiguan area at the Bucana District near the border of what are now Cotabato City and Sultan Kudarat town in Maguindanao.

Tedurays villagers have long been complaining about the presence of Kato and his men and forces of the MILF in their mountain stronghold.

Teduray tribal leaders, in a statement emailed to various media outfits, also described as “so harmful” to their tribe and their traditional and religious practices the spate of violent incidents that rocked Mount Firis and its surroundings last week.

Mount Firis was also a traditional burial site for Teduray chieftains in ancient times, until sacred burial grounds were established in other areas.

The Tedurays at Mount Firis started complaining as early as the late 1990s when MILF forces established camps in their mountain enclaves.

The tension worsened when Kato and his followers broke away from the MILF two years ago and built a community in the area and enforced a strict, Taliban style justice system.

Hundreds of Tedurays were forced to abandon their homes at Mount Firis when bandits led by Kato, leader of the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Movement ((BIFM), attacked Army positions and farming villages to avenge the death of

Abdullah Mahmoud, who was killed in an encounter with patrolling soldiers last June 21.

Members of elite Scout Ranger units, the 33rd and 45th Infantry Battalions, and the 1st Army Mechanized Brigade, have cleared Mt. Firis of bandits, but evacuees from the area are worried the rebels could return once the soldiers pull out.

Oblate missionary Eliseo Mercado, Jr., director of the Institute for Autonomy and Governance, said rebuilding the conflict-stricken Teduray lands will require various social, economic and political interventions by government agencies and non-government organizations.

Mercado, whose peace-building projects in Mindanao are assisted by the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung of Germany and the European Union, said it is also good for Mount Firis and its immediate surroundings to be declared a “protected, demilitarized peace zone” to prevent any outbreak of hostilities in the area between rebel forces and the military.

France Milla, chief information assistant of Maguindanao Gov. Esmael Mangudadatu, told reporters via text message that the provincial governor’s office will support any move to ensure the protection and privacy of Tedurays in the mountains surrounding Mount Firis.

Milla, however, said any effort to convert the area into a “peace zone” has to involve both the government and MILF peace panels, the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process, the Armed Forces, the Philippine National Police and local executives in the towns around the tribal domain.

Milla said Mangudadatu is also recommending the immediate establishment in the area of a monitoring post for the joint GPH-MILF ceasefire committee and the Malaysian-led International Monitoring Team (IMT).

The IMT, comprised of military representatives from Malaysia, Brunei, Libya, Indonesia, and non-uniformed conflict resolution and rehabilitation experts from Norway, Japan and the European Union, has been helping enforce the government-MILF ceasefire in flashpoint areas in the south.

 

 

 

From:

By John Unson, NATION PAGE, www.philstar.com