Deportees’ woes dampen peace pact commemoration

Officials of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) commemorated yesterday the signing of the Sept. 2, 1996 peace accord between the government and Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) in a somber mood, dampened by problems on how the cash-strapped regional government can address the plight of tens of thousands of deportees from Malaysia.

"We have to forego the merrymaking as a gesture of oneness with the Filipinos deported from Malaysia whose future is still uncertain," said ARMM Executive Secretary Nabil Tan.

Majority of the deportees hail from Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi, all ARMM constituent-provinces and among the country’s poorest, locked in clan wars and a hotbed of secessionist rebellion and Islamic fundamentalism.

"The most serious problem confronting us now is how to give these people livelihood," said ARMM Speaker Ibrahim Ibay.

Most of the deportees are dependents of MNLF members who fled the country at the height of the Mindanao conflict in the 1970s, while others relocated to Sabah and other parts of Malaysia only in recent years in search of jobs.

Ibay said he and other members of the 24-seat Regional Legislative Assembly have started convincing international humanitarian groups which had helped rebuild war-devastated communities in support of the 1996 peace pact to provide assistance anew, this time to the deportees.

Malaysia, incidentally, is a Muslim state belonging to the influential Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC), which helped broker the government-MNLF peace agreement and is a member of the Ministerial Committee of the Eight which monitors the implementation of the accord.

OIC inaction

MNLF members still loyal to jailed former ARMM Gov. Nur Misuari said he had long anticipated the "brutal deportation" of Filipinos in Malaysia, but that the OIC ignored his appeal to extend its support in rebuilding war-torn communities in Mindanao to cushion the adverse impact of such an event.

In fact, the Moro National Liberation Front, which Misuari previously chaired, last called on the OIC to increase continuing economic aid to impoverished areas in Sulu, Basilan and Tawi-Tawi, during a gathering of officials of OIC member-states in Kuwait in November 2000.

"What is painful now is that the OIC is ignoring the plight of Filipinos victimized by the brutality of our Malaysian brothers. Until now, not a single OIC member-country has donated even one sack of rice to the Filipino Muslims deported like wild animals from Malaysia," a foreign-trained Islamic theologian in Zamboanga City told The STAR.

The source, who has attended more than a dozen OIC assemblies abroad, said he cannot believe that the organization, which has 54 member-states, including Arab petroleum-exporting countries, has not intervened and helped the deportees.

Some ARMM politicians said the OIC’s support for war-devastated MNLF communities started to dwindle two years ago, after three-fourths of the agreed number of former MNLF guerrillas had been integrated into the Philippine National Police and the Armed Forces.

"Now is the time for the OIC to prove to the world that it is the protector of the poor members of the Ummah (global Islamic community) in keeping with Islamic principles that the Ummah is like a human body, that a pain in one finger is felt by the whole body," said a 40-year-old hadji, who previously worked as one of Misuari’s technical staffers.

Harsh treatment

Muslim preachers in some parts of the ARMM expressed their disappointment over what they called the "harsh treatment" by Malaysian authorities of the Filipino deportees from Sabah and other parts of Malaysia in last Friday’s traditional prayers in mosques.

"We cannot believe until now that a Muslim country can do that to people who are also Muslims," said imam Amir Sahidulla, 50.

"Mabuti pa ang American Embassy, nakapag-donate pa agad ng mga gamot para sa deportees na nakarating na ng Sulu (The American Embassy is better. It immediately donated medicines to the deportees who have already arrived in Sulu)," Sahidulla added.

Tan said it may take a while for foreign donors to extend help in relocating — and rehabilitating — the deportees to their places of origin because of documentary requisites.

"But we are not losing hope. The new ARMM administration is optimistic that the foreign countries that helped in rehabilitating the war-devastated areas covered by the government-MNLF peace agreement will help us once more," Tan said.