3rd of 5 parts
Transitional Justice and Peace
NAGA CITY (MindaNews / 13 September) — Considering the Mindanao peace process context of the Zamboanga Siege and the Misuari Cases, rightly recognized in Judge San Pedro’s 27 October 2016 Resolution, a broader concept of justice tied to that peace process may provide better or fuller justice than criminal justice. We refer to transitional justice, such as that provided for in the 2014 Comprehensive Agreement of the Bangsamoro (CAB) forged between the Philippine government and the MILF only about six months after the Zamboanga Siege. Its Annex on Normalization provision spoke of transitional justice to address the legitimate grievances of the Bangsamoro people, correct historical injustices, and address human rights violations.” This was broadened in the 2019 Organic Law for the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) as the very first Basic Right under R.A. 11054’s Article IX, Sec. 1 “to address the legitimate grievances of the Bangsamoro people and the indigenous peoples, such as historical injustices, human rights violations, and marginalization through land dispossession of territorial and proprietary rights and customary land tenure.”
Transitional justice, as a concept, mainly involves “dealing with the past” of an armed conflict but also with a “future-oriented approach.” Its four key elements are the “right to know,” “right to justice,” “guarantee of non-recurrence,” and “right to reparation.” These four elements can all be applied, best in co-relation to each other, to the Zamboanga Siege, ideally starting with knowing the whole truth about the Siege. This truth may be brought out both inside and outside the judicial process, which is currently the ongoing unfinished Misuari Cases. Outside the judicial process, there could also have been at least a competent, impartial and credible fact-finding mission to get to the truth surrounding the armed violence by both the MNLF and by the AFP-PNP. The CHR9-QRT reports in September 2013, based on the courageous “Ground Zero” direct monitoring and observation led by CHR Commissioner Atty. Jose Manuel S. Mamauag, would have been a good starting point for a deeper investigative report. One wonders whether something like a truth commission for the Zamboanga Siege is viable, but more on this further below.
What was clear and comprehensive was the Post-Conflict Needs Assessment Final Report of December 2013 by the Office of Civil Defense (OCD), Regional Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (RDRRMC), Region IX. This abundantly showed the magnitude of the reparation that was due the victim Zamboangueños and their beloved City. Even in the remote judicial conviction of Chairman Misuari for instigating the Zamboanga Siege, though not necessarily responsible for all the deaths and damages therein, it is highly unlikely that whatever court award for damages will be commensurate to the actual total damages incurred, including the sum of about Php 2.5 billion needed in aid of reconstruction and recovery. Where does the indemnification of all the civilians victims, if at all, figure in all this? In any case, it behooves all those who love Zamboanga City to go back to the well-grounded recommendations in that said Final Report and in turn assess what has been done accordingly, and what is still to be done. Is there a need for something like the R.A. 11696 Marawi Siege Victims Compensation Act of 2022?
Speaking of that much more deadly, destructive and prolonged Marawi Siege of 2017, that seems somewhat like a recurrence of the Zamboanga Siege of only four years earlier, even though the circumstances, particularly the Moro rebel actors, were quite different. In the longer view of the Moro armed conflict, we can go back to the Jolo Siege/ Burning of 1974 involving the MNLF, the Ipil Siege/ Raid of 1995 in Zamboanga Sibugay, and the Cabatangan Siege/ Hostage Taking of 2001 in Zamboanga City involving the MNLF. And so, as for a guarantee of non-recurrence of the Zamboanga Siege, is there a guarantee? Can something like that be guaranteed not to recur?
So far, there has been no recurrence of a MNLF siege ten years hence. This is likely due to a combination of factors. One is that the MNLF has become a spent military force, losing perhaps its best field commander Ustadz Malik, among its significant battlefield losses of fighters and arms, in the Zamboanga Siege. Second is the ongoing prolonged criminal prosecution with convictions even if only by plea bargain agreements of a big number of MNLF elements in the Misuari Cases. In other words, there has been a measure of punishment rather than the usual impunity that is precisely what encourages recurrence. And third is certain progress in addressing and accommodating MNLF grievances about the Mindanao peace process that occasioned its Zamboanga Siege.
The last factor above-mentioned does not however justify the MNLF resort to arms while already having come to its 1996 Final Peace Agreement (FPA) with the Philippine government under President Ramos, and having already been at the helm, with Chairman Misuari being Governor, of the old Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) under the second old Organic Act R.A. 9054 of 2001. The 2001 Cabatangan Siege and the 2013 Zamboanga Siege have been fairly characterized to be like the tantrums of a spoiled brat a.k.a. Chairman/Governor Misuari when things did not go his MNLF way. Among these things were Misuari’s ARMM election losses, even in his home province of Sulu, and his perceived shifting of the government’s primary Mindanao peace track from the MNLF to the MILF starting with the 2001 Tripoli Agreement on Peace under President Arroyo and clinched with the 2012 Framework Agreement on the Bangsamoro (FAB) under President Aquino III.
Worse, the 2001 Cabatangan Siege repeated history in the 2013 Zamboanga Siege not only as a Misuari/MNLF tantrum but also in the particular war crimes of taking hostages and using them as human shields. This has become a very bad habit of the MNLF that sullies its military track record and image as a Bangsa Moro Army (BMA). And it was precisely that human shields reprise in the Zamboanga Siege that fueled the fiery public sentiment there against the peaceful negotiation option and in favor of the military option to end the siege, but at great human, social and development costs. Such high costs made the military victory over the MNLF a “Pyrrhic victory,” then said a leading Zamboanga civil society peace advocate Western Mindanao State University (WMSU) Professor and former President Grace Jimeno-Rebollos. We shall go back to that missed or lost negotiation option further below. But still speaking of reprises, another one in the Zamboanga Siege was the burning of houses by the MNLF in the 1974 Jolo Siege, although in both Sieges there was also blame to be shared with the AFP.
By the most reliable accounts, the Misuari/MNLF grievances behind the Zamboanga Siege were his loss (he claimed to have been cheated) in the May 2013 ARMM elections, the usual corruption issues against the incumbent ARMM regional government no longer under the MNLF helm, and perceived closing by the Philippine government of the MNLF track in favor of the MILF track in the Mindanao peace process. The latter had to do with the government proposing to the mediator Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to already close the extended Tripartite Review of the 1996 FPA. The Review had been the grievance mechanism for the MNLF on its issues of government non-implementation of specific provisions of the FPA. This however was being overtaken by the 2012 FAB and finally the 2014 CAB with the MILF.
(SOLIMAN M. SANTOS JR. is a retired RTC Judge of Naga City, Camarines Sur, serving in the judiciary there from 2010 to 2022. He has an A.B. in History cum laude from U.P. in 1975, a Bachelor of Laws from the University of Nueva Caceres (UNC) in Naga City in 1982, and a Master of Laws from the University of Melbourne in 2000. He is a long-time human rights and international humanitarian lawyer; legislative consultant and legal scholar; peace advocate, researcher and writer; and author of a number of books, including on the Moro and Communist fronts of war and peace. Among his authored books are The Moro Islamic Challenge: Constitutional Rethinking for the Mindanao Peace Process published by UP Press in 2001; Judicial Activist: The Work of a Judge in the RTC of Naga City published by Central Books in 2023; and his latest, Tigaon 1969: Untold Stories of the CPP-NPA, KM and SDK published by Ateneo Press in 2023.)