WFP: 450,000 refugees in Mindanao need more rice

ROMY ELUSFA

DATU PIANG, Maguindanao—For a few minutes, Ibrahim Samsudin, 7, was just sitting on the pavement of a covered court here, looking at a plate of rice his mother gave him. Holding a one-year-old baby, Badria, 25, Ibrahim’s mother, took the plate and poured in about a teaspoon of brown sugar.

Without a word, the seven-year-old boy grabbed the plate from her mother, took a tin cup, poured water on the plate and started eating. In less than two minutes, the plate was emptied and Ibrahim’s three younger brothers had nothing to eat.

A meter away from the Samsudin family, three girls, aging eight, nine and 10 were also sharing rice with noodles in one plate. One of the three would only snatch a handful whenever the two others are not looking at her.

On September 2, four evacuees died in various evacuation centers here. They are one-month-old baby Montasher Sadol, Bayanon Kato, 55, Ludikay Alim, 60, and Zeny Alimodin, 100.

They are only few of the many children and elderly who comprise the 132,425 evacuees in the province of Maguindanao and a 29.43 percent of the 450,000 refugees the World Food Program has pegged for the 11 provinces of Mindanao that were affected by the war.

“Most of the evacuees here are house-based. They stay with their relatives. Those who have no relatives are in evacuation centers,” said Elsie Amil, provincial director of the Welfare office in Maguindanao.

“Only around 45 percent of the evacuees are in evacuation centers while the 65 percent are living with their relatives,” Amil said.

Norodin Muhamad, a resident of Barangay Damatulan in Midsayap, Cotabato, who was still afraid to go back to his home, said in the local dialect: “Our number one need here is rice. While we also need the plastic water container, rice is more important.”

Muhamad, an evacuee at the covered court near the town plaza here, was referring to the plastic container distributed here not by any local government unit of Maguindanao but by the government officials of North Cotabato,.

The evacuees here, who claimed they had been in this town since August 7, admitted that relief goods had been given to them by government and private organizations, but they claimed “the rations are not enough to support our need,” a reason they appealed to government and private organizations to send them “rice, mats, and mosquito nets.”

Asked what would make them go back home, the evacuees chorused: “kalilintad” (peace).

Nashrudin Mokamad, when pressed to specify, said in Maguindanaoan dialect: “Both the Army and the MILF (Moro Islamic Liberation Front) should resolved whatever differences they have so that we civilians will no longer be suffering here.”

Mokamad said: “We are afraid to go home because soldiers are in our place. We vacated when they (soldiers) came because we anticipated armed encounters between them and the MILF.”

Kabagatan Samal, 53, offered a different answer. He said: “Independence will make our place peaceful.”

But while the guns were silent in Central Mindanao today, the evacuees demand for a ceasefire seems far from being answered with the coming in of the 46^th Infantry Battalion fresh from Leyte, Samar. The soldiers arrived in Talayan around 2:00 in the afternoon.

Last night, the government also dissolved its peace negotiating panel, sending mixed signals to the evacuees who said that the government “might have already abandoned the talks.” Others say it might reconstitute a new set of peace negotiators. ###