My story on grief
The headlines blare “Massacre of the Mangu-dadatus” worldwide. The Mangudadatus and my family have been friends for 26 years, a friendship born out of sacrifices for constituents north and south with common needs. Datu Pax, uncle of Toto Mangudadatu of Sultan Kudarat province, is the only Muslim ever elected governor thrice in a Christian area. Last week in Zamboanga, Datu Pax told me, Toto and his people from Buluan, were killed and their land confiscated, specifically 10,000 hectares by the family that attacked this during the week. “Ang mga kalaban ko ay bilyonaryo na. Huwag sana kunin ang lupa ng mga tauhan ko na pobre at patayin pa.” To kill the owners-tillers of the land was brutal.
Grieving Datu Pax said: “Perhaps the President will understand now the urgency of my request for a peace mediator. I had driven to Pampanga to see the President and pleaded with her to intercede for my constituents with the Army as an intermediary. My people feared for their lives and I didn’t want to take up arms.” Andal’s challenger Datu Pax, a true believer in Allah, has worked for years closely with Christians and ends his text messages and bids goodbye with “God bless you.”
The past several days, Datu Pax has tried to assuage feelings of angry husbands, brothers and uncles, ordering them to “stay put” and let the law take its course even as the body count increases. Just yesterday Pax’s relatives crowded funeral parlors to identify the bodies of their beloved women. A huge crowd of weeping Moros elbowed each other for a glimpse of bodies, recalling the color of the clothes of their wives, children, and aunts to identify them that way because their faces were smashed beyond recognition.
Last week, Datu Pax said, “I am challenging the Ampatuans. Toto may run as governor of Maguindanao against Unsay. They cannot continue to kill my people. I must protect my own.” I answered, “Compadre, you are not participating in an electoral process. You are gearing up for war.” That is why Toto visited Governor Andal informed him out of respect that he would be a candidate for Maguindanao governor since the old man Andal wasn’t running anyway. Toto informed him he would challenge any of his sons. The old man was, to say the least, extremely angry.
I recall Mayor Andal Ampatuan of Magonoy before then. A quiet and submissive man, in 1987 he visited me several times in “Awang.” We sat on my home’s steps to laugh and discuss the ARMM’s campaign and pose for photographs with his other mentor, the rising star then, Zacarias Candao. Eventually Zacks became the first governor of the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao during Cory’s governance. Andal’s son, Junior, or Unsay, was a skinny, darker-complexioned boy with a ready smile. Other sons were fair and heavier set... Saudi was the best looking and best educated of the lot and he was a liaison with government offices in Manila. I was in Saudi’s house in Datu Piang, also known by its ancient name “Dulawan,” just the week before Saudi was killed with 11 followers as they walked home from their municipal hall meeting. But that’s another story. There are 600,000 refugees living in nipa shanties by the road of Datu Piang, Maguindano now. I didn’t know that before. I was told because during the typhoon weeks back, fiscal Mariam Mastura texted me “Tita Ting, Luzon is raising funds and food for their flood victims. How about the Moros who were victims of floods and wars here?” In Luzon we hear nothing about that or presume these refugees are being taken care of by the Ampatuans.
On the other hand, I met Pax in 1986 in my Manila residence through Abdullah Camlian of Basilan, once an MNLF commander, and now a panel member of the MILF peace talks. Datu Pax, the criminology graduate and Land Transportation Officer, was mayor of Lutayan in Sultan Kudarat Province. By the way, just to prove migrations of 1954, Datu Pax’s budget officer was from Tarlac, proving that he did not choose a relative as is the custom in the Muslim areas but an honest employee who rose from the ranks. No matter which ethnic group his staff belonged to, as long as they performed well they were acceptable to him. That afternoon of our first meeting, Datu Pax had a request which my husband and I tried to help him with. To his surprise he did not have to pay a fee, as he said he usually would during the dictator’s era, to get his provincial needs approved. Eventually, he came to me regularly with salmon and fruits and lived with us in Tarlac while he bought seedlings for farming purposes from Nueva Ecija, to bring to Sultan Kudarat. Even while he should have been campaigning for himself he was with me. And he won again as Mayor in absentia! His practical wisdom amuses me. As an example, this man Datu Pax with a royal bloodline remarked during our visit to a barangay captain in Luisita, “Everyone here lives inside your mosquito net but inside the net are mosquitoes who bite and cannot appreciate the space where they can move about freely inside the net.” That was in 1998. The analogy still fits his situation in 2009.
Datu Pax, an MNLF commander in the ‘70s, become governor of Sultan Kudarat and today is a member of the House of Representatives. With the return of the democratic process he did become a Cory ally. Parallel to his decisions was also that of Khagi Murad of the Muslim Islamic Liberation Front I worked with. Both aimed to continue their efforts for self-determination — Khagi, through the Islamic Party of the Philippines and Datu Pax as an L.D.P. — but both definitely through the electoral process. It was the alternative to the armed revolutionary struggle. Democracy and autonomy was for both of them the centuries-old dream for economic uplifting and equal opportunities for every Moro down to the barangay level. I can hear Pax say loudly, “Education and health will free my people from poverty.” He built a huge hospital in Sultan Kudarat province and a “rolling clinic” inside a bus. No wonder he’s been constantly victorious in a Christian province.
A partner of Gawad Kalinga, Toto Mangudadatu and Gigi his wife, who was killed, wanted a soul for their municipality. So with Tony Meloto, Boy and Maria Montelibano and myself we pinpointed sites to build homes, not just houses, to help their constituents possess a comfortable family life while acquiring economic liberty. Finally, the misfortune of living in dilapidated houses by Lake Buluan was passé. But beyond the lake where Toto governed as mayor and now vice-mayor is Maguindanao whose peasants cannot complain about being deprived of their internal revenue allotment. They are used to being poor. No one can complain there.
For years, it was whispered among Christians and fellow Muslims that the family being investigated now battles the MILF jointly with the military. Life is full of contrasting circumstances. The Ampatuans are three times my compadres and turn prayerful flying to Mecca while Macau is their recreation spot for winning or losing dollars, while the lady of the house, lovely and simply observant wife Bai Leila Uy Ampatuan, awaits the return of travelers. Bai is a contrast to Pax’s wife who putters around the kitchen and smiles the day away. Both women are selfless wives.
As of last night Toto’s residence had weeping families. Former Tawi-Tawi Vice-Governor Pochong Abubakar and Governor Tupay Loong called me about how saddened they were by the women’s deaths because they believe, like Toto, fellow Moros would not harm women. Therefore, they felt, women could carry his Certificate of Candidacy to Maguindanao safely. But upon entry to the town of Ampatuan, Toto’s followers were murdered.
I know Moro women are held in high esteem. They are strong and forthright in their beliefs. They have struggled with their men even in combat. Sitti Loong, wife of former governor Tupay Loong of Sulu, has protected her family with a cannon that was above my head as I slept on a banig in their bedroom! Hundreds of Moro women died in wars and some were abused and raped by the enemy, or caught in the crossfire, as my documentation indicates. They suffer with their men in political battles and actual wars. They know the smell of death of the MNLF, MILF, and now their kin.
As the MILF would say, “Women’s participation in our years of hard struggle has been mobilized for nation-building, without doing injustice to their natural role as men’s partners. The chemistry between man and woman will never be tampered with. That would be tantamount to destroying the natural order. The first motive in sex is procreation for the continuity of the human race.” Not rape. Toto and Pax’s vision was to develop women in their fields of interest for nation-building, protected from head to foot in yards of cloth to safeguard their womanhood as all Muslim women are. Men are rational beings, they believed, and Christians and Moros must not act like beasts that set no moral limits on their sexual behavior!
The Mangudadatus are devastated and pained. So is our family whom you could include as Mangudadatu’s adopted relatives. They are my peace-loving family in Mindanao. “Do not retaliate,” Pax has cautioned his followers.
I shall, in due time, go there not to witness the usual weddings and birthdays and listen to good governance issues, but to see bodies wrapped in white gauze for burial after Manila investigators perform autopsies, unthinkable to the Moros.
Sadly, there are groups among both Moros and Christians who want the Moros to remain forever marginalized. Opportunity and protection must be ordered so as not to divide the powerful and unscrupulous from the hungry and fearful.
Today, you will find two leaders who are neighbors. Datu Pax of Sultan Kudarat, descendant of the Royal House of Buayan who rejected the process of self-interest and gain; the Ampatuans of the ‘90s, financially and politically very wealthy, chosen by the government as leaders, living a unique lifestyle and governing with unimaginative force.
Once it was Christian versus Muslims. Five days ago it became Mangudadatus versus Ampatuans, Moros versus Moros and “sub-human stuff.”
In the Christian context, martyrdom or a martyr is a person who is put to death because of religious beliefs. In the Qur’an, there are 12 verses I know that directly enumerate the concept of shahadat or martyrdom. The two most interesting suras for me are applicable today:
“Think not of those who are slain in the way of God as dead. May they live finding their sustenance in the presence of their Lord.”
And:
“Those who leave their homes in the cause of Allah and are then slain or die, on them will God bestow verily a good provision. Truly He will admit them to a place with which they shall be well pleased, for God is all-knowing, most forbearing.”
The women and men who died in this brutal massacre are shahids and martyrs and will never die. They shall have their just rewards in the presence of our Lord. Alhamdulillah!
