Philippine Muslims Still Waging Age-Old Resistance
010...@my-deja.com
made of the fact that Philippines is predominantly
Christian? Why is that? If there was a similar article
on Kashmir or Palestine, the US media would immediately
portray it as a Hindu-muslim or Jewish-muslim conflict
(when that is not strictly true). However, when it is
a christian-muslim conflict as in philippines, the
media goes to extraordinary lengths in the opposite
direction and tries to hide that fact. The only time
it will be portrayed as a christian-muslim conflict is
when christians claim to be persecuted as in the
iraqi refugees in mexico. It seems the US media has an
agenda to portray christians as always being persecuted
and gloss over any situations when they are doing the
persecution.
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Philippine Muslims Still Waging Age-Old Resistance
By DAVID LAMB, Times Staff Writer
MANILA--For more than 400 years, the Philippines' predominantly Muslim
southern provinces
have resisted, at a bloody cost to all concerned, outside domination. No
one--not Spanish and U.S.
colonialists, Japanese occupiers or the Manila government--has ever been
able to fully integrate the
area into the broader nation.
Given that history, Philippine President Joseph Estrada's decision to
launch a major military assault
on Jolo island last week to free 19 hostages and destroy the Abu Sayyaf
rebel movement is a high-risk
gamble that is unlikely to end fighting in the war-torn
region--particularly if he merely declares victory
when the hostage drama is over.
"Everyone will tell you there can be no military solution in the south,"
said Sen. Rodolfo Biazon, a
former commander of the armed forces who spent much of his career
battling Muslim separatists on the
island of Mindanao. "You have to improve the conditions of people who
feel they are have-nots, and
that entails political and economic solutions."
After two French hostages escaped their captors and were rescued by
troops early Wednesday,
Estrada said he would call off the offensive if the other hostages were
released. Abu Sayyaf, an Islamic
group, made no formal reply and continued its flight into the jungles
with its captives, including Oakland
resident Jeffrey Schilling.
In a radio interview broadcast today, Schilling said: "I'm fine. I'm
well." He appealed to the
Philippine government to halt its military assault so that negotiations
can resume. The interview,
conducted by satellite phone, was the first confirmation that Schilling
was still alive.
For the 400,000 residents of Jolo island, being in a war zone is hardly
a new experience. The seaside
town of Jolo was twice razed by Spanish armadas, and the current war in
the south has dragged on at
various levels of intensity for about three decades, claiming more than
120,000 lives.
Estrada has shown no tolerance for the separatists'
aspirations--"Independence only over my
dead body," he says--but he has paid more attention and delivered more
economic development to the
southern provinces, where most of the nation's 5 million Muslims live,
than any other recent president.
But the region remains the Philippines' poorest, at least in part
because of the continuing warfare.
Spain gave up trying to convert the provinces to Christianity during
three centuries of colonial rule.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the U.S. had no better luck
getting the Moros, as Muslims are
called here, to acquiesce to foreign authority.
"The enemy numbered 600, including women and children," Mark Twain wrote
of a 1905 battle on
Mindanao, "and we [Americans] abolished them utterly, leaving not even a
baby to cry for his dead
mother."
U.S. soldiers at the time found that their small-bore guns were
ineffective against Muslim warriors
who charged with their bodies wrapped in rattan strips--a primitive and
far-from-perfect version of
the bulletproof vest. To counter such attacks, the Americans eventually
introduced a more powerful,
.45-caliber pistol.
After a period of relative calm following World War II, Islamic strife
flared again in Sulu province,
where Jolo and scores of other islands and islets are located, and in
the rest of the far south when
President Ferdinand E. Marcos declared martial law in 1972 and ordered
all citizens to turn in their
weapons. Feeling threatened, the Moro National Liberation Front, or
MNLF, began attacks against
the armed forces and eventually grew into a force of thousands before
signing a treaty with the
government in 1996.
Abu Sayyaf, or "Father of the Sword," was founded in 1991 as a spinoff
of the MNLF, with the
announced intention of fighting for a "pure" Islamic state. But financed
by kidnappings--including $15
million in ransom for the release of 20 hostages over the past three
months--and tarnished by human
rights violations, it degenerated into what is widely regarded as a band
of criminals.
"The Abu Sayyaf rebels are simply lawless elements," Eid Kabalu, a
spokesman for another militant
Muslim group, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, or MILF, said this
week. "They are giving Islam a
bad name."
In May, the army overran the stronghold of an Abu Sayyaf faction on
Basilan island, causing the
guerrillas to link up with the group's mainstream elements on nearby
Jolo island. Soldiers also threw
the MILF into disarray by capturing its rebel camps on Mindanao.
The offensives, and the current one on Jolo, seriously disrupted the
Islamic rebels' military
capabilities but have by no means ended the south's long history of
bloodshed.
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Before you buy.
Gul Agha
010...@my-deja.com writes:
> ... It seems the US media has an
> agenda to portray christians as always being persecuted
> and gloss over any situations when they are doing the
> persecution.
What about Bosnia?