ROMY ELUSFA
COTABATO CITY—Amid unheeded call by various religious and non-government organizations for government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) to stop the war in Mindanao, no less than the communities affected by the fighting would go to Manila to ask beg from national government officials to give them chance to live a normal life by being able to return back home.
From September 8-14, 15 representatives of various communities that vacated their houses with the sporadic fighting between Army soldiers and MILF guerrillas, would knock on the doors of Malacanang, Senate, Congress and various government line agencies “to beg for peace.”
Since last week, a number of organizations that included religious congregations, have already called for the government and the MILF to stop the war, but as of September 1, armed encounters were still going on in Talitay, Maguindanao.
The evacuee-representatives would be accompanied by leaders of the Mindanao Peoples Caucus who is organizing the evacuees’ journey to Manila dubbed as “Bakwit sa Syudad-2” (evacuees to the city). MPC organized the first “Bakwit sa Syudad” in 2003 where the evacuees asked the President to stop the all-out-war in the Buliok complex.
Rahib Kudto, the deputy secretary-general of MPC who explained that “Bakwit sa Syudad” is a lobby mission, identified the President, Senate president, House Speaker, business and religious groups as among those they planned to meet in Manila.
“ We're planning to do part-2 of the Bakwit sa Syudad, which we did in April 2003 during the height of the Buliok war,” Kudto said as he emphasized that the lobby mission would try “to present the human face of the armed conflict.”
The MPC said it has thought of the organizing the mission amid polarization happening in the war-affected communities.
“With the current effort to polarize communities and the whole madness of arming civilians with 13,000 shotguns, we believe it is time to bring the Bakwits again to Manila. We hope their voices will douse water into the blazing fire. We hope their stories will remind us once again that war will not solve anything and will only victimize more and more people,” said MPC.
With the Bakwits, the MPC hopes “to put forward their calls and appeals to a wider audience, especially those who hold the power and the authority to determine our peace policy for Mindanao.”
Apparently desperate for their message of peace to be heard, the MPC said: “ if we need to talk to the devil -- we will do so just to prevent more bloodshed and save the gains of the peace talks.” ###
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