Evacuees face growing hunger as clashes in Mindanao continue

EDWIN FERNANDEZ

09/18/2008 | 09:11 PM

MIDSAYAP, North Cotabato – Conditions are worsening for villagers who have fled renewed fighting between the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the Armed Forces of the Philippines, now in its sixth week. Many are short of food while others are battling mental problems.

Local officials and health workers have been trying to convince them to return home -- but to no avail.

“Fear and anxiety are hounding many evacuees and they need psychological help," says North Cotabato Governor Jesus Sacdalan.

Just outside Barangay (village) Baliki, a 15-minute ride from the main town of Midsayap over rough roads, nine families are living in makeshift homes.

The village itself is already a virtual ghost town, with only a few armed villagers left. They point out positions two kilometers away where they say MILF snipers are hidden.

“They fire one or two shots a day to send the message they are still there," Alberto, an armed civilian volunteer, told the Philippine Human Rights Reporting Project.

“While our families stay in the main town of Midsayap we must stay here to guard our crops," he said.

At a nearby crossroad, a billboard with huge photos of North Cotabato Representative Lala Santos-Mendoza and President Gloria Macapagal ArroyoPresident Gloria Macapagal Arroyo promotes a new road project.

“They would both be full of holes if the rebels had them in their sights," joked Alberto as he pointed out the damage caused elsewhere by the snipers.

The fighting that has displaced more than 100,000 civilians in North Cotabato since July 27 has shifted south to the province of Maguindanao where the military has been launching air and ground assaults against MILF commander Ombra Kato and his forces.

President Arroyo reportedly ordered a suspension of air attacks in Central Mindanao on September 11 during a dialogue with 17 evacuees appealing to both groups to stop hostilities. But AFP chief of staff Gen. Alexander Yano, who was at the dialogue, denied that there were such orders. A week earlier, military air strikes in Datu Piang, Maguindanao killed five siblings aged between 2 and 18, one of them a pregnant teenager.

The start of the Muslim Holy Month has somehow eased fighting here. But many fear that fighting would erupt anew at the end of Ramadan in the first week of October.

Some refugees are already showing signs of post-traumatic stress syndrome apparently triggered by skirmishes they witnessed when Moro rebels raided the villages of Baliki in Midsayap and Dualing in Aleosan at the end of July.

“In the middle of the night, she sometimes yells out telling everybody to run as the gunmen are coming," Susan Campano, 39, a mother of four, said of her sister.

Campano recalled how her family and neighbors were awakened in late July by MILF guerillas roaming around their home.

Campano’s husband, Gerry, a rice farmer who works in rented fields said the rebels ordered them all to leave.

“We had no choice," he said.

After the government forces drove away the MILF to the borders of North Cotabato and Maguindanao in mid-August, Gerry said they returned home only to find their houses burned down.

“Who did it, we don’t know for certain, the rebels maybe, the soldiers maybe, we really do not know," said Gerry, clutching his three-year-old son amid the overbearing heat trapped under a makeshift tarpaulin shelter, now a common sight across the countryside here.

Six weeks on from the outbreak of fighting and a team of health workers and psychologists from the Department of Health in Manila are finally due to arrive this week.

Father Eduardo Vasquez of the Catholic Church’s inter-religious dialogue in Pikit, North Cotabato, said at least 10,000 individuals remain in evacuation sites in the villages of Pikit.

People of all faith have been affected, he said.

“Muslim evacuees will not return home unless they are sure their villages are free from armed men, be it government soldiers or Moro rebels," Vasquez said.

The evacuees are being looked after by Vasquez’s team of 10 volunteers –but food supplies are dwindling. The International Committee of the Red Cross has already announced it needs to find additional PhP 184.5 million to meet immediate humanitarian needs.

“Their immediate need and urgent concern is food," said Vasquez, an Oblate missionary priest dedicated to serving the poor and marginalized. “It is dangerous if they have nothing to eat since they might end up raiding other homes just to try and feed their families."

Vasquez and his team have found themselves looking after refugees in the surrounding towns –not just those who fled to Pikit.

Meantime around 400 Moro families from the mainly Christian towns of Aleosan, Pikit and Midsayap in North Cotabato have moved south of the river to set up camp in Datu Piang town square in Maguindanao, according to Musib Tan, town spokesperson. Many are second-time evacuees in the last weeks of fighting, having only recently returned home before they were once again forced to flee by a new outbreak of fighting on September 8.

“Our situation here is so hard, especially this fasting month," said Babay Ali, a 40-year-old mother of four.

“We are living in a makeshift tarpaulin-made tent which is so hot at day time and so cold at night," she said.

But difficult it maybe, Ali said she would rather stay in the town square than risk her family’s safety if they return home.

"We are afraid to go home because five civilians were killed in crossfire between the army and the MILF," said Ali as she prepared lunch for her two children who are excused from fasting. “Those killed were our neighbors in the evacuation center."

Ali asked herself out loud: “When can we return home and rebuild our lives? Nobody knows."

Asked why she thought fighting had come to her village, Ali was quick to blame the government in Manila. “Because President Arroyo did not give the MILF what it wants," she said.

And pressed why most of evacuees in the town square were women and children, Ali said the males were out fighting. She however refused to elaborate.

A middle-aged woman interrupted and said the men-folk were all out looking for food. “For our Iftar," she added, referring to the Muslims’ evening meal to break the daily fasting during Ramadan.

What worries Muslim evacuees is that while the government has reportedly suspended air attacks on MILF camps in the Cotabato-Maguindanao-Lanao areas, the military is pursuing its campaign to track down Commander Kato who has been held responsible for killing more than 30 civilians during a series of attacks in North Cotabato in August.

Colonel Julieto Ando, spokesperson for the Philippine Army’s 6th Infantry Division, is adamant that the military action against the MILF group led by Kato will continue.

“These lawless MILF groups should refrain from using civilian as shields and also avoid using child soldiers. Their casualties in North Cotabato include children who are 15 to 16 years old," Ando said.

The military claims to have video evidence of the MILF using child soldiers.

But equally several young children -- far too young even to be able to lift up a gun -- were reportedly killed last week here when a boat they were traveling in was attacked by air force helicopter gun ships. Photographs of the dead children have been widely circulated and local villagers claim there was no fighting of any kind when several boats carrying civilians were attacked. The military have denied they deliberately targeted the group and have claimed fighting was ongoing.

Meanwhile social workers in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) echo Father Vasquez and say a chief problem facing the evacuees is a dwindling supply of food, such as sardines, noodles, milk, sugar and coffee.

Puasa Enok, a local social worker in Maguindanao, adds that people also desperately need non-food supplies like tarpaulins, soaps, cooking utensils and plastic containers for drinking water.

The region’s health department itself reports three main concerns -- inadequate help for the physical and mental well-being of the evacuees; the fact many internally displaced persons are still moving around; and the physical security of the people who are trying to help them.

The Commission on Human Rights in its monitoring reports from Regions 10 to 12 on August 15 to September said evacuation centers are lacking basic services due to risks facing social workers and volunteers.

Apart from food supply, evacuation centers also lack potable water, toilet facilities and rooms. Evacuees don’t get enough medical services and no psychosocial services are available, said in the CHR report.

The fighting has also seriously affected local education: most schools are used as evacuation centers and constant fleeing limit children to go back to school. The ARMM education department currently reports that 195 schools in 24 school districts have effectively been shut down affecting no fewer than 82,944 children. - Philippine Human Rights Reporting Project

(The author is the station manager of Notre Dame Broadcasting Corporation Radio for Peace based in Cotabato City. He manages NDBC’s AM and FM stations which both promote peace and inter-religious dialogues in mainland Mindanao.)