PRESS RELEASE
REFERENCE: BANGSAMORO News Agency
Mindanao, South Philippines
April 1, 2002                                                                              

MASSIVE CRACKDOWN OF BANGSAMORO REFUGEES IN MALAYSIA -- AN ALL-OUT WAR BY MAHATHIR

THE recent massive crackdown of the Malaysian authorities against the political and economic refugees from South Philippines is a clear manifestation of declaration of all out war by the Mahathir regime against the Bangsamoro people of Mindanao. 

A leader of a new liberation movement in Mindanao, who requested anonymity, said that the claim of the Malaysian government as published by the media that those deported from Sabah to Zamboanga were undocumented Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) was a complete fabrication and lie. He said that those deported children and old people can never be OFWs.  

He said that the deportees have been staying in Sabah and other parts of North Borneo for more than two decades as political and economic refugees since the eruption of the Mindanao war between the Philippine government and the Moro National Liberation Front in the year 1970s where those civilians were subject of persecution by the Philippine government under the martial law regime of then dictator President Marcos. 

Most of them have already established their residences and livelihood in the area. Bringing them to Zamboanga where they don’t have lands, houses and means of living is just like killing them because they would only starve here.  

“Mahathir’s move to send back the refugees to Mindanao would only aggravate the situation and has hastened the legitimate desire and aspiration of the Bangsamoro people to liberate or regain their traditional homeland of Mindanao and North Borneo from the hands of their colonizers,” said the leader of the new group. 

The same liberation movement had come out earlier and vowed to liberate Mindanao and North Borneo from their respective colonizers. The group, whose leaders still refused to be identified, claimed they have political, financial and logistics support from superpower countries, apparently one of them is the United Sates of America. 

The US government has been against the policies of Mahathir government. It also wants to put up again its military bases in the Philippines but the Philippine Constitution prohibits it.

The liberation of Mindanao and Sabah and the eventual formation of a new republic, the United States of Mindanao and North Borneo may give a bright prospect to the USA to establish its new military facilities in Southeast Asia. 

Earlier, the dictator and most arrogant government of Mahathir Mohamad of Malaysia committed a highest level of conspiracy against the Bangsamoro people when it illegally and immorally arrested MNLF leader Prof. Nur Misuari and turned him over to another arrogant, harsh and more treacherous government of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo of the Philippines. 

Misuari, who is presently confined inside a police detention facility in Santa Rosa, Laguna, has been charged with a rebellion case despite the fact that it was the Philippine military who provoked and started the war against the MNLF in Jolo, Sulu on November 19, 2001. 

Mahathir and Macapagal-Arroyo have been conspiring to the highest form against the Bangsamoro people knowing very well that their respective governments had immorally and illegally annexed the Bangsamoro homeland of Mindanao and North Borneo.

The group said Mahathir and Macapagal-Arroyo would surely pay for what they have done to the Bangsamoro people. # # #