FEAR PERSISTS IN SOUTHERN PHILIPPINES DESPITE TEMPORARY CEASEFIRE

Despite the deferment of military offensives in Central Mindanao, some 200,000 villagers who fled their homes were still too sacred to return to their respective homes saying that evacuation centers are the safest haven for them. Their fears persisted even though local officials tried to persuade them that it was safe to go back to their homes in the provinces of Maguindanao and North Cotabato following the declaration of temporary ceasefire.

“Fear and apprehension still hound us”, said Nohalima Sambolawan, an Internally Displaced Person (IDP) in Mamasapano, Maguindanao where many villagers remain in evacuation centers. “Despite good gesture of the MILF in reciprocating government’s suspension of military operations (SOMO), we still feel we are not safe to go back to our houses and we’d rather stay here in the evacuation center”, she added.

Combined reports and data from the National Disaster Coordinating Council (NDCC) and the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) Regions 12 and ARMM show that there were about 200,000 (44,000) families) people displaced by the fighting that broke out in August 2008 after guerrillas of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) occupied several villages in this downtrodden Southern Philippines. These displaced villagers are still staying in the 65 evacuation centers or with relatives despite assurances that it is safe to go home.

Evacuees who flocked several evacuation centers in Maguindanao have complained that the moro rebels have been occupying their farmlands, looted some livestock animals and burned several houses. “How can we go back to our houses when our safety and security are at stake? The rebels had gotten everything from us…what else is left for us?” said Abdullah Paguital in teary-eyes and trembling voice and actually refuted the statement of Atty. Zainudin Malang of the Bangsamoro Lawyers’ Network (BLN) who earlier accused the government forces of emotional, physical and economic abuses against the evacuees in the restive South. Malang made such statement during a conference with the European Union envoys in Cotabato City, recently.

Various local and international aid groups and humanitarian watchers, including local government officials said that apart from their apprehension on the possible outbreak of MILF-initiated carnages against civilian populace, cases of rido-related conflict could seem inevitable to occur. “There will be a renewed fighting between feuding families once they get back to their places and this would eventually lead into another mass displacement”, says an international crisis monitor.

Aside from these reasons, local government officials noted that the evacuees have found a new business venture inside the IDP camp where food rations from different aid groups and local government units are sold at “affordable prices”. "Our assistance is not enough and we are aware of that, but our evacuees took advantage of the situation and made this a part of their daily routine now for whatever it’s worth”, the Municipal Social worker of Mamasapano said in an interview.

The World Food Programme and UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) as well as the international and Philippine offices of the Red Cross have helped the government by distributing food, water, and other relief supplies to the evacuees.

It could be recalled that MILF rebels led their forces in a deadly rampage across several mostly Christian to include Muslim towns and villages in central Mindanao in August. They claimed the attacks were in retaliation for a Supreme Court order freezing an MILF-government deal that would have given them control over an expanded autonomous region in the south. From then on, moro secessionists rebels looted homes and businesses, burned down houses, displaced hundreds of thousand of individuals and left some hundreds of people dead.

Despite the fighting, the government said it will still pursue its peace efforts with the 12,000-strong MILF which has been fighting for an Islamic state in the south of the largely-Christian Philippines since 1977.