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MEDIA RELEASE/29 October 2011
KAWAGIB lambasts PNoy’s ‘All-out
Justice’; calls Moro people to defend rights
COTABATO CITY – A Moro human rights group here strongly condemns the
heightened militarization in the provinces of Basilan, Zamboanga Sibugay
and Lanao del Sur designed to PNoy’s ‘all-out justice’ scheme and caused
demise not only to MILF elements and government troops; but death and
displacement of Moro communities and innocent civilians.
The KAWAGIB (Alliance for the Advancement of Moro Human Rights) pronounced
that PNoy’s ‘all-out justice’ is no difference to past regime’s ‘all-out
war’ conspiracy. PNoy continues and intensifies wholesale military
operations in Moro communities that result to more victims of human rights
violations which military deemed only as ‘collateral damage’.
Ustaja Nujum Jandul, KAWAGIB Vice-chairperson said, “PNoy’s ‘all-out
justice’ strategy is an ‘all-out war’ ploy to the Moro people aimed not to
address the century-long struggle for right to self-determination but
utilizing the death of soldiers to justify the war in Southern
Philippines.”
Jandul said that prior Al-Barka’s beheading incident in 2007 and recent
October 17 clash, Basilan is long under Martial Law through State of
Lawlessness declared by GMA in 2001. She added that illegal arrests,
detention, torture and terrorist-tagging of innocent Moro civilians are
persistent to this day where majority of the victims are still
incarcerated in jails to offenses they never committed.
“We are sad that numerous AFP troops fell down. But we are sadder to the
countless Moro civilians who were displaced, domiciles and properties
damaged and even lost lives owing to more than a decade reign of state of
lawlessness in Basilan. As we quest for justice, isn’t it more just to
give justice to innocent Moro civilians who became victims of the State’s
fang?” Jandul said.
The KAWAGIB stated that PNoy’s true color is starting to parade on his
immediate resolutions to crisis the Filipino people are suffering. The
group said that PNoy’s insincerity is apparent to his conflict-management
approach in addressing the agenda of the Bangsamoro people.
“This administration is keen on doling out money, projects and development
attempts to win the hearts of the Moro people but indeed no effort for an
ingenuous political settlement. The Bangsamoro people’s only demand is to
respect their right to self-determination. Indeed, the welfare of the Moro
people is not in the priorities of this regime,” Jandul said.
KAWAGIB calls all Moro people to unite and defend their rights as the only
shield to the State’s encroachment and violations stressing “continue to
assert right to self-determination.” #
For Reference: Ustaja Nujum Jandul, Vice-Chairperson (Basilan-based),
09267875087
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Streetwise
By Carol Pagaduan-Araullo
Killing the peace talks
The cold-blooded murder of 59-year-old Italian missionary priest, Fr.
Fausto “Pops” Tentorio, who was a champion of indigenous people’s rights,
an anti-mining campaigner and a human rights defender, jolts us all to the
reality that President Benigno Aquino III's promise of change is nothing
but empty rhetoric aimed at deluding the people into complacency and
perpetuating the current iniquitous status quo.
Despite the posturing and loud pronouncements for peace and human rights,
the Aquino government has done nothing to fundamentally address the real
and age-old problems that drive significant numbers of our people to
protest and even take up arms against the government. Worse, unarmed
advocates and social activists are assassinated with impunity, continuing
the pattern and practice of violent suppression of legitimate protest.
In response to resistance by rural communities, especially of peasants and
national minorities, to the land grabbing by big mining companies,
loggers, landlords and real estate property developers in cahoots with
military and civilian government officials, the Philippine government (GPH)
utilizes the same-old carrot-and-stick approach, i.e. dole-out and
counterinsurgency programs like the Conditional Cash Transfer Program and
Payapa at Masaganang Pamayanan or PAMANA (Peaceful and Resilient
Communities) and Oplan Bayanihan.
Oplan Bayanihan, which Malacańang claims to be a peace-oriented and
people-centered internal security program, in reality gives priority to
military campaigns aimed at weakening the New People’s Army and reducing
it to “irrelevance”, so that the revolutionary umbrella organization, the
National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) will be forced to lay
down its arms and join the mainstream.
The GPH-NDFP peace talks are just so much hot air as far as the Aquino
government is concerned.
Government's two-track approach to peace negotiations is based on
deception and military force, as underscored by the recent Basilan battle
where nineteen government soldiers and six MILF combatants were killed.
Government says it was not violating the existing ceasefire agreement
because its troops were merely going to serve an arrest warrant on an MILF
commander involved in a 2009 Basilan battle where many soldiers were also
killed.
Did the GPH/AFP really expect the MILF forces to sit idly by while the
"arrest" was being made and not consider the incursion into their claimed
territory to effect that "arrest" an outright attack?
On the one hand the GPH has a ceasefire agreement with the MILF; on the
other, it invokes and asserts its authority to arrest any MILF element,
even an MILF commander, for what it calls a criminal offense when it fact
the act in question is part and parcel of the GPH-MILF armed conflict.
The intent by the military to "arrest" was clearly based on the
criminalization of a political act, not unlike the trumped-up charges of
criminal offenses (murder, illegal possession of firearms and explosives,
arson, etc) versus suspected CPP-NPA-NDF members and sympathizers,
including or especially NDFP peace panel consultants.
In the case of the GPH-NDFP peace negotiations, there is the JASIG that
explicitly provides for immunity and safety guarantees for those involved
in the negotiations. Without the JASIG there could be no peace
negotiations because the NDFP cannot risk exposing those people it
consults and seeks assistance from to military and police surveillance,
harassment, arrest, torture, assassination, etc.
The GPH agreed to the provisions of JASIG. In much the same way, the GPH
and MILF have a ceasefire agreement that covers similar situations
including alleged violations, and provides for measures to address these.
The GPH has been trying to go around the JASIG and even its own laws and
jurisprudence to detain and arrest suspected CPP-NPA-NDFP elements by
criminalizing political offenses. For too long a time, the GPH has been
getting away with it, what with a political leadership beholden to and
relying on the state security forces for support, if not its survival.
The recent Basilan incident is what happens when the GPH carries this tack
too far, thinking it could take into custody an MILF officer (as confirmed
by the MILF leadership) with a special forces platoon.
More importantly, this throws back into light the question of how the GPH
or the Aquino government really intends to bring peace to Mindanao and for
that matter the entire country.
As in the GPH-NDFP talks, the GPH has been mouthing ad nauseam the call
for a "just and lasting peace" by "addressing the roots of the armed
conflict".
But MILF Information Committee deputy chairman Khaled Musa says that
OPAPP's PAMANA project which is being pushed in Maguindanao is "nothing
but plain and simple counter-insurgency scheme aimed at the hearts and
minds of the people".
Furthermore, “(t)he Aquino dispensation through the OPAPP wants to solve
the Moro Question and the armed conflict in Mindanao through the PAMANA
program while it continues to dilly-dally in the negotiation...The
government is not serious in the negotiation."
For its part, the NDFP Peace Panel Spokesperson Fidel Agcaoili says: “The
GPH only wants to talk about peace negotiations but not to really
negotiate seriously and to forge agreements on basic social, economic and
political reforms. It merely wants pacification and capitulation of the
revolutionary movement…”
Like the Arroyo regime before it, the Aquino regime set off by raising our
people's hopes in the peace process, admitting and vowing to rectify the
mistakes of its predecessor.
Close observers of the peace negotiations with the MILF and NDFP will
attest to the fact that both have bent backward considerably to "meet the
government halfway" so to speak.
From its starting position of independence, the MILF has proposed the
Bangsamoro "sub-state" as a compromise political settlement. The NDFP, for
its part, proposed as early as 2005 an alliance and truce based on a
"concise agreement for an immediate just peace" with provisions that are
more bourgeois democratic than socialist.
The Aquino government has rejected both proposals. Instead, it appears
poised to scuttle the talks completely and put the blame on the MILF and
NDFP even as its spokespersons pay lip service to continuing with the
talks.
The conclusion that emerges is that the GPH is not inclined to truly
address the roots of the armed conflict through a negotiated settlement.
What it is really doing is to implement token development and social
services programs to draw away the mass or support base of the MILF and
NDFP and intensify military operations to downgrade their military
capability until they are compelled to accept a negotiated solution
dictated by the GPH.
It is an old, worn-out scheme that is bound to fail again. #
Published in Business World
21-22 October 2011
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AFP,
Aquino regime slammed by MRLO for "All-out Justice" Campaign
Jihad Al-Qursi
Moro Resistance and Liberation Organization
October 27, 2011
Assalamu Alaikum Warahmatullahi taala wa Barakatuhu.
The Moro Resistance and Liberation Organization, an allied organization
under the National Democratic Front fighting for the right to
self-determination of the Moro nation, condemns in the strongest possible
terms, the reactionary Armed Forces of the Philippines and holds the
Aquino regime culpable for the human rights abuses committed against the
people of Basilan and Zamboanga Sibugay Province.
The capture of the AFP of a supposed MILF territory in Payao, Zamboanga
Sibugay province is only the latest in a series of a campaign of
suppression launched by the Aquino government to force the MILF into total
capitulation. This unjust “all out justice” campaign’s ultimate goal is to
render the MILF as an inconsequential revolutionary and to obliterate the
legitimate struggle of the Bangsamoro.
It is clear as day, considering the recent events over the last few
months, that while the MILF has shown genuine sincerity to see the peace
talks through completion, the Aquino regime blatantly disrespects the Moro
people’s right to self-determination. Last week showed a scripted public
disinformation campaign geared at demonizing MILF guerrillas as
bloodthirsty rebels while humanizing the fascist troops of the AFP,
eventually agitating the public and justifying an all-out military
offensive in Zamboanga Sibugay. The three-day air and ground assaults in
Ipil, Naga, Kabasalan, Alicia, Payao, and Mabuhay in Zamboanga Sibugay and
five barangays in Al-Barka, Basilan has left tens of thousands of
civilians displaced and a host of other human rights atrocities.
The offensive in Basilan last week showed the arrogance of the AFP through
its 4th Scout Rangers in raiding a Moro guerrilla territory that is
governed with policies and has legitimate right to defend itself in the
event of enemy encroachment. The AFP has issued a report to the effect
that the military incursion in Basilan was not approved by the Western
Mindanao Command and the AFP hierarchy. Therefore, on the question of who
is to blame for the death of the 19 soldiers, fingers should be pointed
not at the MILF but at the AFP.
The fascist, brutal approach last week, was superseded by the deceptive
fake peace ploy by the Aquino regime in the last few months. In August,
Noynoy Aquino had the temerity to project himself as a keen peacemaker by
meeting with MILF chairperson Al Haj Murad in a public appearance in
Japan. And while attempting to be in the good graces of the Bangsamoro,
his regime attempts to wrest full control in the ARMM by insisting its
right to appoint its own cronies in the ARMM leadership.
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The reactionary government is providing the conditions to legitimize a
full-blown military offensive, to proceed with their goal of total plunder
in the ancestral domain of the Bangsamoro and to stifle resistance of the
Moro people. By failing to address the legitimate demands of the MILF and
the Bangsamoro people, the Aquino regime imposes fascism and state
terrorism in Moro areas while attempting to coopt MILF leaders.
The government is already incapacitated to bring about economic and
political emancipation of the Moro people. It is in fact making Bangsamoro
armed resistance and revolution as the only viable solution to bring about
an end in Moro oppression and to produce real peace and genuine justice. #
Long live the Bangsamoro!
Long live the Filipino people!
Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!
(Sgd) JIHAD AL-QURSI
Spokesperson
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Pnoy's
all out justice is all out war
Ka Efren
NDFP - Farsouth Mindanao Region
October 28, 2011
We view with the gravest concern the retaliatory acts of the US Aquino
regime on the Al-Barka incident where 19 officers and soldiers of the
Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) were killed.
We are one with the Moro people, who are most affected, in condemning
these retaliatory moves of a government whose policy is purportedly
“all-out justice”.
Is this what Aquino calls justice? At least 33 people dead, 40 wounded and
20,000 civilians evacuated; this according to the reports in the national
dailies. Unreported are the atrocities committed by the AFP, which is bent
on drawing blood for their fallen officers and men.
The brutal, fascist attack by the AFP against hapless civilians and the
irresponsible warmongering of out and out militarists in the Senate like
Enrile and Biazon will only stoke the fire of discontent brewing in the
hearts and minds of the BangsaMoro. It will only add to the long list of
state violence and national oppression inflicted on the Moro people. And
it will be another reason for the Moro people to fight back against this
oppressive state represented by the double-dealing, hypocritical US-Aquino
regime.
The National Democratic Front – FSMR is one with the Moro people and their
revolutionary forces in their legitimate struggle for national
emancipation and genuine autonomy and will try its utmost best to fight
for the interests and welfare of the BangsaMoro.
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