Mindanao’s Child EvacueesSend Arroyo Messages of Hope“Mrs. President, we want to go back to our homes so that we can study well and support you. We have suffered enough.” This is just one of the messages scribbled in home-made cards that Mindanao’s child evacuees hope would get the attention of the new administration. By JOWEL F. CANUDAY PARANG, Maguindanao-- If greeting cards can touch the heart, homemade cards sent by children evacuees to President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo can make one's heart bleed. "Dear
Mrs Arroyo, gusto naming itigil ang pagpaputok sa Mindanao para
makapag-aral kami ng mabuti," reads another card written by another
child evacuee, Rowena. (“Dear Mrs. President, we want the fighting to
stop so we can go back to school.”) The cards have
drawings and a collage of children in happy and
playful mood, representing what they called as their "dreamworld." Undersecretary
Jesus Dureza, presidential assistant for Southeastern Mindanao and head of
the government peace panel in the peace talks with the Moro Islamic
Liberation Front (MILF), collected about a dozen of these cards from
children when he visited the evacuation center at Amir Bara Lidasan
National High School here Wednesday last week. Dureza promised
the children that he would personally hand over the cards to President
Macapagal. "My heart bleeds for these refugees, especially children.
They have been there since May,"
Dureza told reporters who accompanied him in the visit. But the
children did not stop at merely sending greeting cards to the President.
Assisted by the peace advocacy group Kids for Peace, they engaged Dureza
in a "peace dialogue" right inside the evacuation center. "Sabihin
ninyo kay President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo na sanay matapos na ang giyera
para makauwi kami sa aming lugar, para makapag-aral na kami mabuti at saka
po para makatrabaho kami," Badria
Burjan, a nine-year-old child evacuee, told Dureza. (“Tell President
Arroyo that we hope the war will end so we can go back to our homes, our
schools and so we can work.”) Badria’s
cousin, Monaira, a Grade 3 student, told Dureza that several people died
in their village when the fighting erupted last year. "Para sa akin
po, ang gusto ko po ay mawala na ang giyera sa aming lugar dahil paano na
po ang aming kinabukasan kung palagi lang giyera?" Monaira said.
(“To me, I want the war to stop. What would happen to our future if the
war continues?”) Cotabato Meeting Last week,
government and MILF emissaries met in Cotabato City for the first time
after the war that erupted in late April 2000. It lasted only
30 minutes, but when they emerged from the closed-door meeting, the faces
of the emissaries exuded the hope that the peace process would resume
soon. Lawyer
Lanang Ali, a member of the now disbanded MILF reciprocal technical
working committee and the rebel group's official representative in its
backroom talks with the government, also joined the meeting at the
residence of Maguindanao Gov. Zacaria Candao. Candao once served as legal
counsel of the MILF. The
meeting, Dureza said, was technically not part of the peace process but
was meant to "extend symbolically the hand of peace and the message
of peace from the President." He said this “breakthrough"
would "set the ball rolling." Ali said
the meeting set an "atmosphere" indicating that the peace-making
efforts of the government “has very much improved." For The Worse The
conflict in Mindanao took a turn for the worse during Estrada’s time. He
allegedly declared war in order to gain popularity points after his
administration figured in a series of scandals and controversies that
ultimately led to his ouster from office last month. The war
displaced more than 300,000 residents, most of them Moros, and killed
thousands of civilians, rebels and soldiers. It also plunged the island
into its worse economic crisis since the Marcos years, with agricultural
production – its main economic power – decreasing significantly.
Investors also shied away from the island, which was at the time rocked by
a series of bombings and other forms of violence even in non-conflict
areas. The MILF
is the largest guerrilla group waging war against the government in
Mindanao. It had wanted a separate Islamic state but agreed to put the
issue of self-determination through a referendum supervised by the United
Nations. Nothing came out of that proposal. The war
in Mindanao takes its roots from the decades of neglect by the Manila
government of the island and the extractive economic policies it
implemented in favor of big business and multinational corporations.
Mindanao is largely a plantation economy dominated by big landed
interests, including foreign multinational companies that have been
exploiting its rich natural resources for decades. Mindanawons
have been complaining that despite their island’s large contribution to
the country’s economy (contributing, for example, more than half of the
Philippine’s corn produce), not much has been plowed back to improve the
island. In fact, most of the 10 poorest provinces in the country can be
found in Mindanao, the poorest being those within the Autonomous Region in
Muslim Mindanao. Mindanao’s
indigenous community have also been decimated by the entry of so-called
development aggression to the island, mainly through multinational mining
and agricultural companies that dispossessed them of their ancestral
lands. This
inequality has spawned rebellions not only by the Moros and the Lumads but
by the Communists as well who have had a strong presence in the Mindanao,
countering the power being wielded in mineral-rich regions by
multinational companies and big business. In 1996,
the Ramos administration signed a peace agreement with the then dominant
rebel group, the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), but the agreement
has so far been not fully implemented, with MNLF chairman Nur Misuari
complaining about its defects every so often. The sidelining of Misuari as
a result of the agreement strengthened the MILF, making it the dominant
rebel group on the island at present. Misuari’s
chief complaint is that the agreement has not been that empowering to the
Moros, who, despite the existence of
supposed autonomy, are still at the mercy of the Manila government.
For example, according to Misuari, his region cannot appropriate its own
budget. “I even have to seek the permission of Malacanang each time I go
out of the country,” Misuari had said. The MILF
has called the 1996 peace agreement a sham and vowed never to take the
same route taken by the MNLF in its negotiations with the government. #
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