KIDAPAWAN CITY (MindaNews/15 April) — An election official in Tulunan, North Cotabato, was gunned down by two unidentified motorcycle-riding men in M’lang, of the same province, around 4 p.m. today.
SPO4 Albert Claudio, deputy chief of M’lang police, identified the victim as Francisco Mecutuan Jr., Commission on Elections officer of Tulunan and a resident of Matalam, North Cotabato.
Part I
Humanitarian Milet B. Mendoza was held captive for 61 days from September 15, 2008 by the Abu Sayyaf in Basilan. She concludes her captivity story with some insights on how to understand and approach the kidnapping problem in the complex areas of conflict. This will be published in two parts.
(Note to readers: this is supposed to be the third part of Ms Mendoza's series on her captivity but she has opted to do a two-part post-Lenten reflection on Moving Forward. Ms Mendoza gave MindaNews permission to run this two-part series – MindaNews ed)
An Inexplicable Calling
I have been fortunate to have worked in Mindanao for many years and particularly to have worked with our Muslim brothers and sisters in Central Mindanao as well as the Basilan-Sulu-Tawi-Tawi (BaSulTa) area. As a program coordinator for Tabang Mindanaw, I coordinated humanitarian assistance for hundreds of thousands of indigenous Filipinos during the El Niño in April 1998 in Southern Central Mindanao, and also during the all-out-war between Philippine government forces and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in Central Mindanao which displaced hundreds of thousands of the civilian population from 2000 to 2003.
DAVAO CITY (MindaNews/15 April) — You have a 9 mm or a .45 pistol?
The regional police information officer here sent out invitations to journalists for a training on “threat detection, counter surveillance and personal security” and “gun safety and actual firing/marksmanship” on April 25 and 26.
GENERAL SANTOS CITY (MindaNews/15 April) – “You don’t want me to have a rest?”
This was somewhat the bewildered reply from Armed Forces of the Philippines Chief of Staff Gen. Alexander Yano when asked if he did not, at all, lobby for an extension of his tour of duty as the country’s top military official.
DAVAO CITY (MindaNews/15 April) — Ground breaking. In Mindanao, the land of the daring, the adventurous, we witness audacious efforts at evolving cutting edge strategies for social order. And they work.
Take the DDS, for instance.
Or maybe not. Not today, anyway.
DAVAO CITY (MindaNews/15 April) — My hands and arms are getting tired of being pulled, grasped, clasped and yanked. Is this what it feels like to be a celebrity? We’ve been driving since 6 am when we met at Freedom Park in Downtown Davao, the main city in the southern Island of Mindanao, Philippines. The plan for “Peace Power Day” (on March 18, 2009) was to travel a 500 km circular route through the 4-province Magindanaoan region of central Mindanao and then back to Davao. An ambitious goal for our “Peace Caravan” of 21 vehicles plastered with banners saying the likes of, “Save the Evacuees,” and, “Ceasefire Now!”
They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious.
‘Peace, peace,’ they say, when there is no peace—Jeremiah 6:14
DATU PIANG, Maguindanao (MindaNews/15 April) — Here at last is the ‘bakwit’ country. Just like the name of the first village entering this long stretch of depressed humanity called Barangay Salvo, where one would be greeted with a barrage of worn-out hopes from faces not keenly captured in airwaves and podcasts, either in recycled newspapers or in picture messages from high-end mobile phones. Here is the country that denies the scrapping of the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain by the Supreme Court. Here the MOA-AD is alive and felt among the hearts and minds of the Bangsamoro. Here is the country that tells the very meaning of internal displacement even when government social welfare agencies have tried to obfuscate their existence.
It seems Malacaňang did not get the sarcasm in Pimentel’s suggestion to make use of the VFA to rescue the hostages of the Abu Sayyaf when it announced that it is seriously considering the idea.
While the Senator gave the suggestion amidst calls for VFA’s abrogation, he is surely aware that Mindanao , and most especially Basilan and Sulu, have been highly militarized for years now. He must have been aware also of the statements made by US military officials and even by the US Embassy that US troops have been assisting the AFP in fighting terrorists. They have been lending support, they said, especially by way of their high-tech intelligence gathering devices.
DAVAO CITY (IDIS/14 April) — The country's 1-Million hectares target expansion of large-scale corporate plantation all over Mindanao prompted farmers and environment advocates to come together and assess the impact of mono-crop farming and pesticides to peoples' health and the environment.
