Ending 2010 with a bang

There’s something so mesmerizing if not demonic, about blazing and ear-splitting fireworks that attract people — adults and children — to play with them during the holidays, particularly to welcome the New Year. The Philippine STAR report of Jan. 2, 2011, said that 287 revelers were injured from firecracker blasts, bringing to 518 the number of fireworks victims since December 21. Another newspaper reported six deaths from blasts. The Department of Health also recorded fireworks-related cases — 11 cases of stray bullet injuries, raising the number of victims of indiscriminate firing to 20. There were also three new cases of poisoning from fireworks ingestion, bringing to eight the number of cases since the agency began its surveillance for the “Kampanya Kontra Paputok” program last year. The figures bring to 546 the number of injuries recorded by the DOH.

TV footages and newspaper reports showed victims with bloodied bodies, shattered eyes, mangled if not severed arms, fingers and legs. Severe warnings from government authorities year after year do not discourage the revelers from living dangerously. People never learn.

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 The death and injury tolls give credence to Nandy Pacheco’s call for a controlled gun ban during “peace” times, i.e. beyond the holiday celebrations. Give a person a gun, and in times of emergency, in a moment of careless abandon, or macho mania, he is tempted to fire away, at objects, at people. Keep a gun in your person, and deaths and injuries are likely to occur.

Nandy is leading the movement called Tagatulak ng Kapayapaan (Peace Movement) that aims to push the People’s Struggle for Peace. The PSP, says Nandy, is “a group of believers from all walks of life who spend Christ’s peace, based on love, reconciliation and active nonviolence.”

The Peace Movement is not holding street rallies, but asking people and public and private organizations to put stickers in their cars bravely declaring, “Kung Walang Baril, Di Tayo Mababaril” and for media outlets — television and radio and print media — to promote the stickers.

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Talking of firefights, the Year 2010 ended with a bang — without a shot being fired — for two Malaysians who were released from captivity a few days before Christmas, thanks to the unrelenting operations conducted by the Special Action Force of the Philippine National Police (SAF-PNP) to recover them. The seaborne troops of the SAF rescued Chen Yui Chung, 48, and Lai Wong Chun, 46, along the coast of Bongao, the provincial capital of Tawi-Tawi.

DILG Undersecretary Rico Puno had praises for the SAF and the PNP for putting pressure on the kidnappers, a group of Malaysian bandits who are said to have ties with the local Abu Sayyaf.

Usec Puno, the presidential liaison to the PNP, is reported to have coordinated an unprecedented cooperation between Philippine and Malaysian authorities in gathering and exchanging intelligence data on the kidnap group. No shot was fired, and the kidnappers were said to have been forced to abandon their captives in Bongao to escape a firefight against the SAF forces.

The accomplishment hopefully will restore local and international confidence in our police force.

According to reports, police operations are continuing in a bid to arrest the Malaysian bandits with ties to Abu Sayyaf, a local terror group affiliated with the Jemaah Islamiyah, a regional terror group based in Indonesia, which, in turn, has ties to Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda group.

 Puno flew the victims to Manila where they underwent a check-up at the PNP Hospital in Camp Crame before being turned over to their relatives and officials of the Malaysian Embassy.

Chen Yui and Lai Wong were abducted last February 8 in the Malaysian state of Sabah, which is closest to the Philippines’ southernmost province, Tawi-Tawi.

According to PNP Director General Raul Bacalzo, the victims were moved around locations in Malaysia, Tawi-Tawi, Sulu, Basilan and the Zamboanga Peninsula.

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Another good year-end report is that of the completion of the rebuilding of the first Muslim mosque by the French Legion of Honor and National Order of Merit Association co-presidents French Ambassador Thierry Borja de Mozota and former Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr., of the first Muslim mosque built in Tawi-Tawi, in Mindanao.

The mosque was built in Tawi-Tawi, Southern Philippines in 1380, 141 years before Magellan reached the country.

At the simple rites on tiny Siminul Island facing Sabah, the French envoy and de Venecia said the Association’s “modest mosque project symbolizes Christian-Muslim solidarity in a strategic isle of the Sulu Sea where Islam began in the Philippines before the arrival of the first Spanish colonizer.”

The French Ambassador and de Venecia, together with reelected officers, Vice President and Secretary-General Louis-Paul Heussaff and Philippe Gauthier, respectively; Deputy Secretary-General Grace Glory Go, Treasurer Roberto de Ocampo, Deputy Treasurer Aurelio Montinola III, legal counsel Noel Laman, Corporate Secretary George-Gascon Feydean and Special Assistant Gretchen Wilwayco are recipients of the French Legion of Honor and Order of Merit, the highest award of the French Government, initiated by the Emperor Napoleon.

In his year-end report, Association Vice-President Heussaff said the completion of the Sheik Karimul Makhdum Mosque was widely publicized in Paris media.

The Association designated Heussaff, French business leader, to coordinate the Mosque’s rehabilitation with the National Historical Institute headed by Ludovico Badoy, the Makdum Mosque Foundation under its President M.A Bayo, Governor Sadikul Sahali and Rep. Nur Jaafar and other leaders of Muslim civil society following their multi-sector meeting in de Venecia’s residence in Metro Manila in early 2010.

Heussaff initiated the project with former Speaker de Venecia, who introduced the Interfaith and Christian-Muslim dialogue approved by the United Nations in 2004, now adopted by many governments.

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