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Mindanao peace group says
Arroyo must be made accountable for spoiling GRP-MILF pact; US should keep
out
STATEMENT
Initiatives for Peace in Mindanao
August 16, 2008
We in the Initiatives for Peace in Mindanao (InPeace Mindanao) support the
Moro people's right to self-determination and authentic peace negotiations
between the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) and the
Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).
We believe that peace in
Moroland can only be achieved when the roots of armed conflict -- economic
inequality, political marginalization, national oppression, and
imperialist globalization--- are addressed.
We are saddened, however, that the political machinations of the Arroyo
regime lead to the further minoritization of the Moro people instead of
upholding their right to self-determination.
Arroyo has demonstrated a lack of sincerity in the talks, moreso, in the
implementation of any peace agreement with the MILF. Recent developments
reveal that Malacanang has consciously kept the contents of the Memorandum
of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD) from public view in order not to
expose early on its hidden charter change agenda. It has therefore
deliberately omitted a process of genuine consultation in order to spring
this surprise and mask its ill will before the MILF. Arroyo foists the
MOA-AD on the Filipino people as an instrument of political
self-perpetuation rather than as an agreement that will genuinely promote
Bangsamoro self-autonomy.
It has ensured the predominance of warhawks in the GRP peace panel and
appointed General Hermogenes Esperon as peace adviser to create an opening
for Arroyo's term extension through a make-believe self-autonomy
agreement. Arroyo sugar-coats her bid for Charter amendments as a move to
peacefully resolve the Moro conflict. In the end, the Arroyo government's
overtures for peace are mere rhetoric. It is patently chauvinistic because
its overarching policy is all-out war against the Bangsamoro people.
The unfolding events in Mindanao are consciously being steered by the
Arroyo government. She is mobilizing the country's political and economic
elite at the national and provincial levels to foment their deep-seated
anti-Moro chauvinism to justify the current military offensives and
enforced displacement of over 150,000 Moro and non-Moro people.
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We warn against efforts by
vested interest groups and clans who are fanning "Muslim-Christian enmity"
to preserve their monopoly of landholdings and political clout in
Mindanao. Religious conflict is being stirred to cover up the real nature
of the Mindanao conflict--- landgrabbing and land monopoly by elite
families and clans, big business, and TNCs and MNCs, on one hand, and
landlessness and agrarian unrest of Mindanao peasants regardless of their
race or religion, on the other.
We are also apprehensive of the meddling of the United States government
in the peace talks through the US Institute of Peace (USIP) and the
presence of US troops in ARMM areas. The USIP entered the peace talks as a
facilitator since 2003 and, together with US Ambassador Kristie Kenney,
has discreetly influenced much of its outcome. It has employed "coercive
diplomacy" or the "carrot and stick" approach in the drafting of the
GRP-MILF peace agreements that promise to pour in some $30-million in
post-agreement funds while US troops are on a standby attack mode in the
pretext of counter-terrorism. Its maneuverings have ensured the big role
of the US, along with other advanced countries that have spread millions
of Official Development Aid (ODA) in ARMM, in the envisioned Bangsamoro
Juridical Entity.
We condemn this US intervention as it derails genuine peace for the Moro
people and equates peace with the security agenda of the United States in
Mindanao and Southeast Asia. The US has been forthright in admitting that
it is 'involved' in the peace process with the MILF to rid Mindanao of its
self-defined "terrorists." Its strategic motive is to establish US
foothold in oil, natural gas, mineral ore, and agribusiness interests in
the region.
The people of Mindanao, especially the Moro people, should bear in mind
the historical wrongs inflicted by the United States Empire, which
continue today with its bogus 'war on terror', US military deployment, and
economic plunder of natural resources that abound in Moro territories.
The Filipino and Bangsamoro people should make the US-backed Arroyo
government accountable for scurrying the peace process. A 'people's
review' of the MOA-AD should be undertaken if only to salvage the document
as an authentic instrument for Bangsamoro self-determination. We demand
for a grassroots-oriented and solidarity-based process that is
complementary and parallel to genuine peace negotiations where the Moro
people and their leaders can be given the opportunity to share their
vision of self-autonomy and right to self-determination, far from the need
for political survival of the Arroyo regime, and the interventionism of
the United States. # |
