ISABELA CITY, Basilan, Dec 7 (PIA) – The second year anniversary of the infamous Maguindanao massacre and the Mindanao Week of Peace drew commemorative activities that put civilian and military officials alongside local journalists to advance the advocacies for peace, justice and growth in Mindanao.
Members of the Cotabato City chapters of the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) and the Kapisanan ng mga Brodkaster sa Pilipinas (KBP) were joined by regional heads of agencies of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) in the solemn rite preceding the regular discussions on issues and concerns at the local media forum.
ARMM Information chief Ali G. Macabalang disclosed that officialdom of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao held its weekly Tapatan sa ARMM media forum at the regional executive conference room in Cotabato last Nov. 23 that saw attending journalists and guests lighting candles and praying for justice for the victims of the massacre, peace in Mindanao, and good governance in Moro communities.
In a revealing announcement, ARMM’s Regional Economic Zone Authority Executive Director Rosalaini Alonto-Sinarimbo averred that more than the 58 people, including 32 journalists slain in the carnage and their grieving families, the autonomous regional government, too, is the bigger “struggling” victim in the massacre.
“Because of the negative opinion shaped by the massacre among outsiders towards the principal suspects, the people now holding positions in the institutions or places where accused Ampatuans were previously associated with like the ARMM government, feels deprived and persecuted,” Sinarimbo said at the forum.
Sinarimbo cited the suspension of multi-million peso projects in Maguindanao by the World Bank as an offshoot of the image-breaking massacre. The suspension, though, was lifted in 2010 after the new ARMM administration painstakingly brought back normalcy in its governance in a so-called triumph that saw the World Bank approving even additional US$30-million package in the region.
She said the Office of the President had transferred its supervisory power over the autonomous region to the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG), “making ARMM an ordinary local government unit (LGU) until now.”
She recalled that early this year, Palace officials and Congress allies rallied for the passage of RA 10153 that postponed and synchronized ARMM election for 2013, which some ARMM populace felt the curtailment of their rights of suffrage to elect their leaders and stop the President from appointing caretakers.
Philippine Star staff reporter John Unson, NUJC Cotabato chapter president, Rajah Buayan ABC president Zamzamin Ampatuan, and Maguindanao provincial election registrar Udtog Tago, a lawyer, shared the belief that the massacre indeed has brought about stigma not only among the slain victims and their families but also on a greater number of people and children unduly implicated in the criminal prosecution process.
At the media forum, Fr. Dace Procalla, the ARMM’s chief of the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV), however, expressed optimism that the massacre would eventually redound to a better electoral system in Maguindanao, in particular, and the ARMM, in general.
Meanwhile, Sinarimbo and the personnel of the ARMM’s Bureau of Public Information alongside the same group of local journalists conducted a tree planting last Nov 24 at the ground of the Army’s 38th Infantry Battalion in Barangay Semba, Datu Odin Sinsuat, Maguindanao in support of the Mindanao Week of Peace observance this year.
Cotabato City Vice Mayor Muslimin Sema on his way to a flight for Manila dropped by and joined the group in planting his own tree and expressing thoughts recalling the fateful day of massacre.
In his recollection, Sema said the early hours after the breakout of raw information about the incident was characterized by “deafening silence” where no media entity or personality would comment about it.
But he professed that in the late afternoon of Nov. 23, 2009, he could not help but go on the air over radio stations and condemned the carnage, asking relatives of victims to keep sobriety as the incident might trigger a “civil war.”
Prior to Sema’s remarks, Unson, Macabalang and Philippine Daily Inquirer’s Charlie Senase also expressed their sentiments about the incident, sounding off their burning emotion on the loss of their intimate colleague Alejandro “Bong” Reblando, a Manila Bulletin reporter who was one of the 32 slain media practitioners.
For his part, event’s host Col. Bernie Langub, commander of the 38th IB, said his command had taken a lesson from the massacre in overhauling the organization and character of the Civilian Armed Forces Geographical Units (CAFGUs) under his jurisdiction. It may be recalled that some armed elements suspected of involvement in the massacre were CAFGUs.
Langub said that after persistent indoctrinations and trainings, the CAFGUs in Maguindanao and nearby areas would no longer serve at the whims of politicians but pursue a thrust mandated of true public servants in local communities.
Brig. Gen. Rey Ardo, the commanding general of the 6th Infantry Division, a mother unit of the host battalion, expressed belief that while government efforts have put an end to the reign of impunity in Maguindanao after the massacre, some unscrupulous sectors remain untouched in creating violence in the province.
“Isolated cases of armed skirmishes stemming mostly from land conflicts were being exploited by groups with vested interest to ostensibly draw military actions and escalate the violence,” Ardo said.
“But no, the 6th ID will not be drawn to evil schemes,” Ardo said, pointing out that a great part of his 30-year service in the Army has been spent in Mindanao and that his experience in the area has taught him to prefer settling conflict in the negotiation table.
From the Army headquarters, the group of journalists, BPI staff and Sinarimbo proceeded to the massacre site in sitio Masalay, Barangay Salman in Ampatuan town to take a glimpse of the place that placed the Philippines in the world map of violence against the media. (BPI-ARMM/RVC-PIA9 ZBST)
