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Press Statement
25 July 2008
Bangsamoro Juridical Entity should not be used to divide the people of
Mindanao
The inclusion of several villages in Zamboanga City in the mapping of the
Moro people’s ancestral domain should not appear as a threat to the people
of Zamboanga. Rather it should be a venue for the people of Mindanao to
assert their right to land and ancestral domain.
It is not new for the Moro people to hear landed families and politicians
of Mindanao react to the Bangsamoro Juridical Entity. However, politicians
should know better than to fan anti-Moro hysteria by accusing their Moro
brothers and sisters of reclaiming lands and inciting them to arm
themselves the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.
The mapping out of the Moro people’s ancestral claim should undergo a
process, and should not be forced on the people. The decision of which and
how many villages should be included in the Moro people’s territorial
claims should not solely be at the hands of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo
or be limited at the negotiating table of the GRP-MILF peace talks.
It is the responsibility of the government to correct the pervading notion
that the Moro people are out to forcibly take the lands of the Christian
settlers and the Lumads. While plebiscite may be a venue for the people to
decide whether they want to be part of the Moro people’s ancestral domain,
the government should inform and educate the public by providing venues
wherein the people can fully discuss not only the Moro people’s claim to
ancestral domain, but the issue of ancestral domain and land rights of the
people of Mindanao as a whole.
We may view the BJE as the Moro people’s way of correcting historical
injustice, that of decades of forcible evacuation as a result of
government policies on land ownership, forcible evacuation of residents
due to decades of war and military operations and the accumulation of
lands by the few business and landed elite families– Christians and Moros
alike.
To correct our biases, we must learn lessons from our history. The
settlers and the Lumads in Mindanao lost their lands for these same
reasons. We were made to fight over what was left of the land, ravaged by
multinationals and landed elite. Even in our small tracts we were reduced
to being tenants, plantation workers with small pay and, worse, driven
away.
The MILF and even the Moro National Liberation Front have yet to realize
the aspirations of the Moro people’s right to self-determination. The
Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao is a far cry to the genuine autonomy
they agreed with the government, for it did not even give the right for
the Moro people to utilize and manage their natural resources. ARMM
remained tied to the economic polices of the national government, and deep
in debt.
The national government and the politicians have had so many years to
correct their policies, yet they chose the status quo. Under the Arroyo
administration, lands remained at hands of the rich and being sold to
multinational companies. Already the government has signed a deal with
Exxon Mobil for the exploration of the oil-rich Sulu Sea and other
multinationals lining up to get a chunk of the natural gas in Liguasan
Marsh.
President Arroyo even intensified the mining policy which has flushed out
thousands of Lumads out of their mountains, and continued the land
conversion programs that has forced the Christian and Lumad farmers out of
their lands. Only the multinationals rake in profit from the low pay of
workers in the rubber, palm and fruit plantations in Mindanao.
We must unite to resolve the problem of the people of Mindanao. The people
of Mindanao should respect the land of its fellow people. Let us put a
stop to the monopoly of land by one clan, one government official and
foreign businesses. Let us assert that the Mindanao lands should be for
the people – for the Moro, for settlers and for the Lumads. #
Amirah Ali Lidasan
National President, Suara Bangsamoro
Telefax (064)421.5860; Mobile: 09196603839
email: suarabm@yahoo.com |
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