Empowerment and Protection - Stories of Human Security Oct. 2014 | Page 72
IN NUMBERS
Philippines
PEOPLE KILLED IN
MINDANAO CONFLICT
100-150
Background
The Philippines is a 7,100 island archipelago in Southeast Asia
with an estimated population of 100 million. Its population
is made up of diverse ethno-linguistic groupings of primarily
Indo-Malay and Sino origins. Its colonial past under Spanish and
American influences gave birth to the prevailing socio-cultural,
political and economic dynamics today.
Historically serving as a trading hub between
Asia, Europe and later the Americas, the country
is divided into three geographical regions. The
northern and central Luzon region is home to
the
=10.000.000capital, Manila, and is the site of the country’s
industrial production. The island-filled midarchipelago region of the Visayas is dominated
by agricultural production and trade, while the
southern Mindanao region remains the frontier of
the country, with resources and territories opened
for exploitation and development as late as the
1950s. A government-sponsored resettlement
programme that in part sought to open the south to
resource development for the industrialising north
brought a wave of settler migration.
Coupled with the government’s pacification efforts
through resettlement, this contributed to much
of the insecurity in the Mindanao region which
prevails today.
History of conflict, subjugation and insecurity
EVELOPMENT
3
Before the arrival of European explorers in the
1500s, the Philippine islands already hosted an
indigenous population that shared a common
tribal ancestry, gathered under different groupings
and clans. Intertribal wars and conflicts were
part of tribal life along with traditional peace
and brotherhood agreements celebrated with
cere monies, offerings, and celebrations. Islamic
missionaries passing via the southern corridors
of Malaysia provided the toehold for the Islamic
faith in the islands, and some Indigenous Peoples
(IP) tribes converted. With the opening of the
southern corridor, slavery became an economic
opportunity for Islamised traders and their
communities, spurring attacks on non-Islamised
IPs for captives. Conversion to Islam was at times
enforced on captive IPs, though more peaceful
attempts at harmony and co-existence, based on
acknowledgment of the ancestral links between
Islamised and non-Islamised IPs, also remained in
collective memory. This was the norm and way of
72 stories of Human Security | The Philippines
ESTIMATED DISPLACED PEOPLE
2 MILLION
THOUSAND
(PLOUGHSHARES 2014)
NPA experienced a similar ideological splintering,
which diminished its support base. The Mindanao
region remained a theatre of dissident operations,
split among the NPA in the northeast sections of
the island, the MILF in the south-central region,
and the MNLF in the southwestern peninsula of
Zamboanga down to the southern island provinces
closest to Malaysia.
It is estimated that the Moro conflict has cost the
government at least 100 billion pesos (US $2.3m)
since 1970. It has claimed the lives of more than
100,000 people and displaced over 2 million, some
repeatedly.3 Meanwhile, decades of violent conflict
have also undermined economic development
and left millions in poverty. The lack of economic
opportunity and legal protection for women
and children has spawned widespread human
trafficking. Despite the constant state of insecurity
brought by conflict, the region’s oppressed
populations exhibit an admirable level of resiliency
and perseverance.
life for many of the island’s inhabitants until the first
wave of European colonisers.
Beginning in the 1500s and continuing for over
300 years, the Spanish Catholic colonisers carried
out multiple pacification campaigns on the Muslim
“Moros” of Mindanao, then a pejorative term they
used mainly for the Islamised tribes they found in
the south, who they perceived as savages. After
the Spanish defeat in the Spanish-American War
of 1898, U.S. forces assumed forced control of the
islands, committing massacres and displacing the
population in the south. These historical injustices
form part of the Moro people’s long-simmering
resentment toward the colonisers and eventually
the Philippine government, which is perceived to
continue similar policies.
From the 1970s through to the mid-1980s, martial
law under President Ferdinand Marcos fuelled
repression in the region. Desaparecidos, or those
forcibly ‘disappeared,’ numbered in the thousands.
Practices such as the introduction of a ‘low intensity
conflict’ pacification strategy, which the Philippine
military patterned after the U.S. military campaign
in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s, rendered rural
villages ghost towns, turned communities and
neighbors against each other and wrought havoc
on the area’s simple economies and socio-political
systems.1 Local grievances were further fuelled by
perennial conflicts between business conglomerates
expanding their access and control over the region’s
rich resources and the rural populations already
living there.
A promise as yet unfulfilled
In 1986, the People Power-EDSA Revolutiona
toppled the Marcos dictatorship in a near-bloodless,
civilian-led uprising. The newly established
democracy led by President Corazon C. Aquino
enshrined its vision for the future in a revised 1987
national constitution that sought to ensure greater
freedoms, representation and parity for all. It
provided openings for greater civil participation in
governance, enhanced guarantees for human rights
and dignity, and recognised a national identity.
In an eventual peace deal with the MNLF, it also
established the Autonomous Region of Muslim
Mindanao (ARMM) as an acknowledgment of
Muslim Mindanao’s desire for self-governance.
However, more than a quarter century since,
the Philippines has yet to consistently and
comprehensively live up to the spirit and intent of
this landmark agreement. Entering the millennia,
the country has had a second president overthrown,
a former president investigated and arrested for
plunder, its electoral process cast into doubt, a chief
justice impeached and its legislature embroiled in
corruption and financial scandals.
Intensifying repression and human rights violations
perpetrated under martial law gave rise to
secessionist and separatist movements. To this day,
these movements continue to pursue their causes
in armed struggle. Two of these armed movements,
the Communist Party of the Philippine’s-led New
People’s Army (NPA) and the Moro National
Liberation Front (MNLF), were established more
than forty years ago. At its peak during the martial
law years, the MNLF claimed a force of 45,000
armed men, while the NPA claimed a number close
to half that.2
On the other hand, this history of repression and
resistance generated strong popular advocacy
The two armed movements outlived the Marcos
regime, but eventually splintered due to internal
divisions. The Moro Islamic Liberation Front
(MILF), an offshoot from the MNLF, declared itself
a fundamentalist Islamist movement fighting for
‘Bangsamoro’ (Moro Homeland) independence. The
a The revolution is named for the main thoroughfare in Manila, the
Epifanio de los Santos Avenue, or EDSA, which was the site of the main
protests that ended the Marcos regime.
Menu
PRIMARY SCHOOL
ENROLLMENT (% NET)
88%
IN 2009
SINCE MINDANAO CONFLICT
(PLOUGHSHARES 2014)
YOUTH UNEMPLOYMENT
14.9%
IN 2012
(WORLD BANK 2014B)
(WORLD BANK 2014C)
and a rich civil society, which has nurtured
Mindanao’s tri-people perspective, advocating
equal rights and respect for settlers, the Moros,
and IPs. Furthermore, the country has high hopes
for the end to a 16-year peace negotiation process
between the Philippine government and the
MILF, which seeks comprehensive and equitable
resolutions to key issues.4 The peace process has
This history of repression
and resistance generate d
strong popular advocacy and
a rich civil society
.
led to the ongoing drafting of the Bangsamoro
Basic Law (BBL), which aims to describe a vision,
identity and formation process for the proposed
Moro homeland, to be known as the Bangsamoro.
The Bangsamoro would supplant the ARMM
and be enabled with greater socio-economic
and political powers than any of the previous
frameworks. A plebiscite will be held in the
region to ratify the BBL once it is passed through
Congress.
While it is hoped that the development of the
BBL will address many of the demands for greater
self-governance and autonomy of the Moros, many
feel that it does not comprehensively address
the concerns of IPs in the proposed Bangsamoro
territory, most of whom allege to have been largely
excluded from the peace process. As a result, IPs
fear that they will continue to face displacement,
killings, and the subversion of their rights to their
ancestral domains and lands.
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