Ethnic
cleansing in Mindanao, Philippines
By
Fred Hill, in Islamic Horizons,
17 April, 1996
This
article was contributed by Islamic Horizons. It's author, Fred
Hill, is an experienced editor and broadcaster who teaches
social studies in a New Hampshire high school. He visited
Mindanao under a Rotary Club grant. He is also author of the
forthcoming book Teasing the Tiger: A Third World Study of
Muslim Mindanao.
Mindanao
is continuing to earn its reputation as the "wild west of
the Philippines." Heavily armed security guards are
everywhere, displaying grenades and Armalite M-16s. Private
armies and armed vigilantes rule portions of the interior, and
government checkpoints circle the cities. Kidnapping and
banditry, ethnic and "religious" violence, all
contribute to the island's frontier image.
Western
news reporters have found explosive stories in Mindanao in
recent months. Typically, Mindanao's problems are presented in
the press, but the causes of those problems are not discussed.
Western journalists choose words like "Muslim" and
"extremist" as if they are interchangeable, and add
terms like "terrorist" to cast judgment on their
cause. Repeated acts of violence appear to be beyond
explanation, as if war was the inevitable result of mixing
Christians with Muslims.
There
is much more to the Mindanao story behind the headlines.
Mindanao is an island with a culture and history quite different
from the rest of the Philippines. Islam has dominated the island
for centuries. Its proud mujaheddin have defended their homes
against colonial invaders from Spain, the United States and
Japan. Now the Philippine government rules Mindanao, and they
are exploiting the resources, diluting the Muslim majority and
containing tribal peoples in enclaves of underdevelopment.
Settlers from the crowded and predominantly Christian Luzon and
Visayan islands have grown into a dominant culture, seizing
Muslim homelands declared 'public domain' by the courts of
Manila. Newcomers prospered, while the indigenous were displaced
and abandoned to poverty.
An
armed resistance developed in the late 60s, with the Moro
National Liberation Front (MNLF) and the Moro Islamic Liberation
Front (MILF) opposing the Philippine military and Christian
vigilante forces. President Ferdinand Marcos responded with
bombing, mass arrests and forced disarmament. MNLF leaders
sought recognition from the Organization of the Islamic
Conference (OIC) and the United Nations. Under pressure from
Islamic states, Marcos began peace negotiations and offered a
formula or regional autonomy. Today the Autonomous Region of
Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) poses as a cosmetic independence that
satisfies no one. Yet MNLF Chairman Nur Misuari is cautiously
committed to this experiment, and enforces his end of the
cease-fire while giving peace a chance. More militant members of
MNLF and the children of guerrillas martyred in the separatist
battles of the 70s have chosen more dramatic means of
resistance, including Abu Sayyaf.
"Ethnic
cleansing" is a harsh term to apply to the Philippine
government. No cattle cars herd the population into detention
camps, as seen in Bosnia. No bulldozers destroy family homes as
in the West Bank and Jerusalem. The tools of Philippine's ethnic
cleansing are more subtle, and easier for the outside world to
ignore.
In
addition to settlement and "development" policies, the
Philippine government regularly manipulates population
statistics to minimize the Muslim count. Since only Christian
birth and death records are recognized as official, there is no
accurate census available on the current Muslim population.
Voter representation and the need for government services in
Muslim sectors can thus be denied or devalued, and electoral
results are easily manipulated. Despite autonomy votes in 13
provinces with apparent Muslim majorities, autonomy was granted
in only the four poorest provinces. Any visitor can see that the
number of Muslims appear to be much more than the official
estimates claim. The explanation given by the government is that
the rest were "squatters" routinely evicated when
their settlements were burned.
Development
planners allocate resources to benefit Christian settlers at the
expense of native Muslims. The National Power Company (NPC) has
crowded 7 hydroelectric dams along a 30-km. stretch of the Agus
River, to power the factories of Iligan and Cagayan de Oro. This
enormous strain is destroying Lake Lanao, the river's source,
which covers 100,000 acres to depths of up to 300 feet. For
centuries the Maranao ("people of the lake") have
relied on this lake for the subsistence of thousands. Now more
than half of it has been drained away to power coastal
factories, while Muslim cities like Marawi suffer diminished
resources. NPC executives explain that some "Muslim
bandits" have retaliated by cutting power lines and
sabotaging generators. These officials dismiss the international
protest of this ecocide, only to hear all local concerns
dismissed with a laugh: "The receding shoreline means that
they will have to walk a little farther to wash their
clothes." Hardships to the Muslim population seem to
attract little concern.
Cheap
energy lures out-of-town contractors to build up industry along
the coast. National Steel Company, the Philippines' largest
steel mill, is often trumpeted as a grand development scheme to
industrialize northern Mindanao. Located in the Muslim
countryside, west of Iligan City, it is a major employer in the
area. But most of the 4000 employees are Christian Visayans,
many of whom were brought there to convert and expand the plant
in the 1970s. They remained to take the jobs and displace
farming and fishing villages. Despite the official line that
"local hiring" was the rule, no Maranao names could be
found on the union list.
Responding
to a query that how many Muslims work here, one of the bosses
said, "Five or ten, I'd say." Not percent, but only 5
or 10 out of 4000. It is bluntly said that local Muslims are not
educated enough to be employable in the steel mill. Recent
efforts by the Mayor of Iligan to expel all Muslim students from
the city's public schools would presumably preserve this
imbalance.
The
media publishes reports about the "Muslim" violence in
Mindanao, but not the reasons for their frustration. Philippine
policies to water down and displace the Muslim majority (now a
minority, since the 1950s), government repression of all
resistance and schemes of token "autonomy" co-opts the
moderates and enrages the rest. As the forests and lakes recede
and the benefits of the resources are drained off to others,
some Muslims feel compelled to take more drastic action. Groups
like Abu Sayyaf commit regrettable acts of violence, but these
actions can hardly be dismissed as "pointless
terrorism." Instead, these are the predictable responses of
an endangered people. END
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