Cotabato City – The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) has urged the government to settle the issue of ancestral domain to get the 11-year-old peace talks back to the negotiating table.
In a message on the MILF website, chief rebel negotiator Muhaquer Iqbal and other MILF leaders insinuated that the most pressing concern to get the peace talks “back on track” is how both sides would implement all consensus points on ancestral domain.
Peace talks between the government and the MILF started Jan. 7, 1997, but gained headway only in 2003 with Malaysia as mediator.
The ancestral domain issue, the thorniest topic in the GRP-MILF talks, encompasses the MILF‘s concept of a Southern Muslim homeland to be governed by its proposed Bangsamoro Juridical Entity (BJE).
The peace talks have been stalled since last year over misunderstandings between the two panels on how to fuse together geographically scattered Moro communities, which the MILF wants governed under the BJE.
Peace advocates in the South, among them Catholic missionaries involved in various peace-building activities in areas covered by the MILF-military ceasefire, have asked the government and MILF panels to resume the talks.
It was in July 1997 when the government and MILF panels forged the so-called General Agreement on Cessation of Hostilities, restraining combatants from both sides from embarking on any tactical maneuvers in areas covered by the ceasefire without prior coordination.
Lawyer Oscar Sampulna, executive secretary of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, said ARMM Gov. Datu Zaldy Ampatuan directed last week all of his constituent-mayors and provincial governors to help the joint ceasefire committee in its peacekeeping missions in the South to allay fears of renewed hostilities as a consequence of the pullout of Malaysian peace monitors in the south.
Twenty-eight Malaysian members of the International Monitoring Team, which has been helping enforce the ceasefire since 2004, returned to Malaysia last May 10 to start the gradual withdrawal from Mindanao of Malaysia‘s peacekeeping contingent in the multinational IMT.
The IMT is composed of police and military officers from Malaysia, Brunei, Libya, and a rehabilitation specialist from Japan.
However, Sampulna, a Maguindanaon, said the ARMM administration can only initiate “regional level peace initiatives” necessary to maintain the cordiality between the government and the MILF.
“We have foreign and local-funded projects in many areas where these MNLF and MILF members reside,” he said.
“We are optimistic the communities involved in the implementation of these projects will help maintain the fragile peace in areas covered by the ceasefire.”
Give Muslims an Islamic state – Bishop
The Catholic bishop of Marawi City asked the government yesterday to grant an Islamic state to the Bangsamoro in Mindanao.
Bishop Edwin dela Peña yesterday told CBCPNews, the official news service of the Catholic Bishops‘ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), he is one with the Bangsamoro people in pushing for the creation of an Islamic state.
“It is about time that we should give to our brother and sister Muslims their aspirations for Mindanao,” he said.
Dela Peña said Muslims and Christians would be able to peacefully co-exist in an Islamic state.
“The Christians are still covered by the civil law of the land, while the Muslims are covered by Sharíah law,” he said.
“More so, the Islamic state will also allow the creation of Islamic institutions inspired by the Quran. If going beyond the Constitution will help attain finality in the peace talks, then the Arroyo regime should consider doing it, provided that it would not be in violation of the law.”
Dela Peña said if the ancestral domain issue remains unresolved, it would derail the resumption of the peace negotiations, and the government has to make a little sacrifice in the name of peace in Mindanao.
“If we are really for peace, we don‘t care if we sacrifice as long as we can assure that there will be peace. Mindanao has suffered enough. Let‘s give peace a chance now.”
Source: www.philstar.com - John Unson (3 Juni 2008)
