Muslim assembly seeks UN help in Mindanao independence move

SULTAN KUDARAT, Maguindanao — Some 30,000 Muslims from different regions in the South held here yesterday the Bangsamoro People’s Assembly, where speakers took turns in urging the United Nations to sponsor a referendum for Mindanao independence.

Surprisingly, not one of the speakers in the assembly condemned the Abu Sayyaf, a pro-independence fundamentalist group notorious for its criminal activities and now holding 20 captives abducted by its guerrillas in a beach resort in Palawan last week.

Abhoud Syed Lingga, chair of the Ulama-Professional Executive Committee, which organized the activity, said the gathering, held at a public terminal here, was only aimed at dramatizing the aspirations of Mindanao’s Moro inhabitants for self-governance.

Sources from the military’s intelligence community said they are certain that the MILF, which has a peace venture with the government, helped organize the assembly.

"We are sure of that. In fact this is already the second. The first was held in 1996 also in the same town and the same people organized that gathering," said a senior military intelligence officer based in nearby Cotabato City.

Lingga was quick to downplay insinuations that the MILF is behind their three-day gathering, which reeled off yesterday.

"This is just an initiative of the Bangsamoro inhabitants of Mindanao," Lingga said.

Yesterday’s ceremonial opening of the assembly was held at an open field at a highway junction here connecting the Secretary Narciso Ramos Highway and the Cotabato-Davao Highway.

Speculations are rife that the assembly could have been organized to project that only the grant of independence to Muslims in the South is the solution to the nagging peace and order problems in the region, now a hotbed of Muslim rebellion.

Apart from the MILF, which is fighting for a puritan Islamic state to be carved out of predominantly Muslim areas in Mindanao, the Abu Sayyaf, whose members are virtually fanatics, also threaten the island’s security.

The government, has been persistent in asserting that it can only negotiate with the MILF within the framework of the Charter and will not in anyway compromise the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. — John Unson