Marine General’s
‘Detention’ Provoked by Peace Pact Violations
The “detention” by
Moro rebels of a military group led by Muslim convert Brig. Gen. Benjamin
Dolorfino last week stemmed from the repeated postponement of a proposed
tripartite meeting with the government and the Organization of Islamic
Conference (OIC). The proposed tripartite meeting was to tackle issues
related to the implementation of the 1996 Final Peace Agreement between
the GRP and the MNLF.
BY ALEXANDER MARTIN
REMOLLINO
Bulatlat
The “detention” by the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF)
of a group led by Muslim convert, Marine Maj. Gen. Benjamin Dolorfino in
Jolo, Sulu on Feb. 2-4 stemmed from the repeated postponement of a
proposed tripartite meeting with the Government of the Republic of the
Philippines (GRP) and the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC). The
proposed tripartite meeting was to tackle issues related to the
implementation of the 1996 Final Peace Agreement between the GRP and the
MNLF.
This was revealed by Jolo Councilor Temojen “Cocoy” Tulawie
in an interview with Bulatlat. Tulawie, who is also a convener of
the Concerned Citizens of Sulu, was with representatives of the
Geneva-based conflict-monitoring group Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue in
mediating in what has been described in some news reports as a “hostage
drama.”
The holding of the Army general led Gen. Hermogenes
Esperson, Armed Forces chief of staff, on Feb. 9 to order military
meetings with Moro rebels to be held on “neutral grounds.”
Dolorfino, who also uses the name Ben Muhammad, went with
Undersecretary for Peace Ramon Santos and 13 others to the MNLF’s Camp
Jabal Ubod in Panamao, Jolo, southern Philippines morning of Feb. 2 to
talk with MNLF representatives headed by Ustadz Habier Malik. The group
included two colonels, a junior officer, nine enlisted men, and several
members of Santos’ staff. In the afternoon of that same day, they were
prevented from leaving the camp.
Tulawie told Bulatlat that Malik and his men held
Dolorfino’s group as a leverage for demanding a definite schedule for the
tripartite meeting proposed by the MNLF.
“General Dolorfino and his group were asked why the
tripartite meeting had been postponed again, and Undersecretary Santos
could not give any answer,” Tulawie told Bulatlat. “So they were
prevented from leaving until the GRP and the OIC agreed to schedule a
meeting for March 17. That will only be a preliminary meeting.”
The Jolo councilor pointed out that even the Armed Forces
of the Philippines (AFP) shied away from describing what happened as an
illegal detention.
“There were Marines and Army soldiers in Dolorfino’s group
and they were not disarmed,” Tulawie said. “They continued the discussions
in the camp until the government and the OIC agreed to schedule a
meeting.”
Tulawie said the MNLF had been pushing for a tripartite
meeting as early as before the original date of the 12th ASEAN
(Association of Southeast Asian Nations) Summit, but it kept being
postponed. “It had been postponed five times,” Tulawie disclosed.
This repeated postponement of the proposed tripartite
meeting provoked the MNLF to hold Dolorfino’s group until a definite
schedule could be agreed upon, Tulawie explained.*
“Ustadz Habier Malik said the tripartite meeting would
serve as a venue for threshing out what could be wrong with the GRP and
what could be wrong with the MNLF in the implementation of the 1996 Peace
Agreement,” Tulawie said.
Flashback
The MNLF traces its origins to a massacre of between 28 and
64 Moro fighters recruited by the government in 1968 for a scheme to
occupy Sabah, an island near Mindanao to which the Philippines has a
historic claim.
Sabah ended up in the hands of the Malaysian government
during the presidency of Diosdado Macapagal (1961-1965). His successor
Ferdinand Marcos conceived a scheme involving the recruitment of Moro
fighters to occupy the island.
The recruits were summarily executed by their military
superiors in 1968, in what is now known as the infamous Jabidah Massacre.
The Jabidah Massacre triggered widespread outrage among the
Moros and led to the formation of the MNLF that same year. The MNLF waged
an armed revolutionary struggle against the GRP for an independent Muslim
state in Mindanao.
The Marcos government, weighed down by the costs of the
Mindanao war, negotiated for peace and signed an agreement with the MNLF
in Tripoli, Libya in the mid-1970s. The pact involved the grant of
autonomy to the Mindanao Muslims.
Negotiations between the GRP and the MNLF went on and off
until 1996, when the two parties signed a Final Peace Agreement which
created the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) as a concession to
the group.
Sulu is one of four provinces under the ARMM: the others
are Basilan, Maguindanao, and Tawi-Tawi.
Renewed hostilities
In October 2001, hostilities broke out anew between the GRP
and the MNLF. The military was in hot pursuit of Abu Sayyaf bandits who
had abducted tourists in Sipadan, Malaysia. At one point, the military had
announced the defeat of an “Abu Sayyaf” contingent in Talipao, Sulu.
The MNLF, however, said that it was its guerrillas, not Abu
Sayyaf bandits, who were killed by the military.
The massacre in Talipao led the MNLF, just five years after
signing a peace agreement with the government, to once more take up arms.
MNLF founding chairman Nur Misuari, a former political science professor
at the University of the Philippines (UP) who was then ARMM governor, said
the Talipao Massacre was a “violation” of the 1996 Peace Agreement.
Misuari, who was then in Malaysia, ended up being arrested
and subsequently detained in a military camp in Sta. Rosa, Laguna (38 kms
south of Manila). He is currently facing rebellion charges.
Military officials have repeatedly accused the MNLF of
coddling “terrorist” groups in its turf but this has been denied by MNLF
leaders. Bulatlat
* The
12th ASEAN Summit was supposed to be held in Cebu last
December. It was, however, postponed to January – purportedly due to a
storm that hit the country in mid-December. It finally pushed through in
Cebu last month.
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