Muslim Hate in the Philippines
Troops are killed, some beheaded, in southern Philippines
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
MANILA: At least 14 government troops were killed in some of the heaviest fighting with Muslim insurgents in the southern Philippines in recent months, officials said Wednesday.
Military officials said they had recovered the bodies of 14 marines after clashes with suspected Abu Sayyaf militants late Tuesday in Tipo-tipo, a hinterland town on Basilan island, and that at least 10 of them had been beheaded.
A marine spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Ariel Caculitan, said in Manila that 50 marines had clashed with more than 300 rebels. "We were totally outnumbered," he said.
Major General Ben Mohammad Dolorfino suggested that the marines had been beheaded by Abu Sayyaf in retaliation for the slaying of the son of one of the group's leaders. "They got angry, that's why they decapitated the marines," Dolorfino said.
However, leaders of another group, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, said it was its own fighters who had fought with the marines and killed 23 of them. But the front's spokesman, Abu Majid, denied the front's fighters had beheaded the marines. He said this was done by "unidentified groups" after the fighting, and that the front planned to investigate. He said four rebels had been killed and seven wounded.
Majid also said the violence could have been avoided had the government troops, who had entered the area in search of a kidnapped Roman Catholic priest from Italy, consulted with the front first. "We have all the mechanism in the cease-fire that allows coordination and to prevent this kind of unfortunate incident," he said.
The military said the marines had been patrolling Tipo-tipo to check out reports that the Reverend Giancarlo Bossi, who was kidnapped last month in Zamboanga Sibugay Province, also in the southern Philippines, had been taken to Basilan.
The Moro Islamic Liberation Front has been fighting for a separate Islamic state for Filipino Muslims in the south for three decades; a cease-fire is in effect, although there have been violations. The agreement requires both sides to coordinate their movements if one side ventures into an area where the other side is present. Majid said he did not understand why the marines did not notify the front of its operations in Tipo-tipo.
Mohaqher Iqbal, the head of the front's negotiating panel, said: "Our troops thought they were under attack. That's why they fought back. It should have not happened."
The Philippine government had said that some elements of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front were also working with Abu Sayyaf and Jemaah Islamiyah, two groups that have been blamed for some of the most horrific terrorist attacks in the country since 2001.
The front has denied any connection with Abu Sayyaf or Jemaah Islamiyah, but promised to purge its ranks of extremists.
Muslim Filipinos Vote as Violence Rages in Southern Philippines
By
Nancy-Amelia Collins
Jakarta – Voice of America
11 August 2008
Over a
million and a half Muslim Filipinos have voted in a regional election held amid
escalating violence between the government and Muslim separatists in the
southern Philippines. VOA correspondent Nancy-Amelia Collins in Jakarta reports.
Around 1.6 million Muslim Filipinos voted Monday for a governor, vice governor,
and 24 members of a regional legislative assembly in the six-province Autonomous
Region in Muslim Mindanao, known as the ARMM.
Local and international observers called the polls generally peaceful but marred
by perennial problems such as tainted voter's lists.
Fighting between Muslim rebels and government troops in North Cotabato, which is
not part of the ARMM, did not directly affect the elections.
Tensions
remained high in the region as troops battled with hundreds of separatist Muslim
fighters in North Cotabato forcing an estimated 130,000 people to flee their
homes.
The fighting began Sunday after rebels from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front,
or MILF, defied a government ultimatum to withdraw from several Christian
villages in North Cotabato on the southern island of Mindanao.
Mohaqher Iqbal, the chief peace negotiator for the MILF, told VOA the violence
was escalating.
"Fighting is still on going and it is worsening day by day because more troops
coming from the government are enforcing their positions in various towns in the
province," said Iqbal. "Our forces are defending themselves from this operation
by the Philippine Forces."
The flare up of violence in the southern Philippines follows a decision last
week by the country's Supreme Court to suspend a deal for an expanded Muslim
homeland the group had agreed on with the government.
MILF chief negotiator Iqbal warned the peace process was in danger of
collapsing.
"We are negotiating with the Philippine government as the sole representative of
the government of the Republic of the Philippines. And then as to the internal
squabbles to the three branches of government, the position of the MILF is that
that is internal to the Philippine government, and if the Supreme Court rules
negative, then as far as we are concerned, the peace process is practically
dead," added Iqbal.
The ARMM, the country's poorest region, was created in 1989, as part of a deal
to end the conflict with another large Muslim separatist group, the Moro
National Liberation Front.
The MILF has been negotiating with Manila since 1997 to enlarge the Muslim
homeland and grant it wider political, economic, and social powers.
But the Supreme court's decision last week to put on hold the expanded
territorial deal, which, among other things, would allow the proposed Muslim
homeland to retain 75 percent of all revenues from its natural resources, has
created uncertainty.
The 12,000 strong MILF has been fighting with the government since the late
1960's in a conflict that has claimed the lives of more than 120,000 people.
The Philippines is predominately Roman Catholic, but around 5 percent of the
population is Muslim and the majority of them live in the south.
Islamic separatists kill 28 in Philippines rampage
August 18, 2008
International Herald Tribune
Islamic separatists attacked several towns and villages Monday in the troubled southern Philippine region of Mindanao, killing at least 28 people in a rampage that, officials said, included hacking several people with machetes and spraying bullets into buses.
The attacks came as tens of thousands of villagers in other areas of Mindanao were returning to their homes following the fighting last week between government troops and the Muslim rebels.
News reports from Mindanao said several of the victims had been hacked with machetes. The rebels, according to officials, also burned down houses. The police said that the fatalities were mostly civilians, mainly farmers, while an undetermined number were soldiers.
Officials said more than 200 rebels attacked at least four towns in two provinces in Mindanao.
President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo called the attacks "sneaky and treacherous" and ordered the military and the police "to defend every inch of Philippine territory" against the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the main Islamic separatist group operating in Mindanao.
"I will crush any attempt to disturb peace and development in Mindanao," the president said in a radio address.
The civilians were killed when the rebels withdrew, said Brigadier General Hilario Atendido, a military commander in the area. "They used them as human shields," Atendido said, speaking on the radio station DZBB. "The rebels killed them on their way out."
According to news reports, the rebels also took several residents as hostages. A bus driver told a radio station in Mindanao that the rebels, shouting "Kill them all!" fired on his bus. The driver did not say how many of his passengers were wounded or killed.
Mohamad Khalid Dimaporo, the governor of Lanao del Sur Province, said that the rebels were moving toward Christian-dominated towns in the coastal areas and that the military was directing its forces to protect those places.
"The military is doubling its forces," he told ABS-CBN television. "The highest priority now is to secure the coastal towns."
Eid Kabalu, a spokesman for the rebel front, said it was still checking reports that the attackers were rebels. He urged the public "not to jump to conclusions" as the front investigated the attacks.
But in case the rebels were front members, Kabalu urged them to stop the violence and to pull out of the province. He said the Moro Islamic Liberation Front did not issue any directive to carry out the attacks.
The violence this week, which began on Sunday in Lanao del Sur, where four soldiers and four military-supported militia members were killed, is certain to complicate the peace negotiations between the government and the front.
Two weeks ago, both sides had reached an agreement that they thought could end the fighting. But it was scuttled because of protests over the concessions that were to be given to the Muslim rebels. Government negotiators then said they were willing to abandon the peace agreement because of the backlash it caused in the Philippines. Analysts had said the breakdown of the talks could lead to more violence.
The new attacks, said the army chief, General Alexander Yano, were a "clear manifestation of the insincerity to the peace process of a significant portion" of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. This, he added, "is a virtual declaration of war against the duly constituted authority."