ZAMBOANGA CITY (Mindanao Examiner / May 4, 2014) – Zamboanga City has cancelled a peace rally set on Sunday, a month after another rally lambasted the government over the poor plight of victims of war in this southern Filipino port city.
The Mindanao Alliance for Peace was supposed to hold the rally at the Plaza Pershing as part of simultaneous actions in Mindanao as show of support to the Bangsamoro Basic Law, whose draft was submitted to President Benigno Aquino by the Bangsamoro Transition Commission.
The law would create a ministerial form of Muslim government in Mindanao based on the peace agreement signed recently by Philippine peace negotiators with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the country’s largest Muslim rebel group.
Similar rallies were held over the weekend by civil society groups in the cities of Isabela, Pagadian, Cotabato, Marawi, Tacurong, General Santos and Davao, and also in the provinces of Sulu, Lanao del Norte and North Cotabato.
In cancelling the rally, Zamboanga City Mayor Maria Isabelle Salazar has cited the recommendations by the police and military, but the basis of the decision was unclear, except that it was for the best interest of the locals.
“The supposed rally of the Mindanao Alliance for Peace at Plaza Pershing today was cancelled by the City Government based on recommendations of the police and military authorities and for the interest of the majority of Zamboangueños. The deployment of police and military forces in strategic areas downtown and the outlying barangays is part of the pre-emptive security measures to safeguard the city and people,” Salazar said in a bulletin posted on the government’s Facebook account.
“The police and military and civilian government are on top of the situation and will do everything possible to ensure the welfare of the constituents. Let us remain vigilant but calm and voluntarily share info regarding suspicious activities, baggage or personalities in your area. Refrain from
forwarding unverified text messages,” she added.
Salazar did not say if the Zamboanga is facing terror threats, but last month, hundreds of Muslims rallied in Zamboanga in protest and lambasted the government’s failure to facilitate the return of thousands of war refugees still in filthy evacuation camps here.
Many refugees and protesters, some of them Christians – carrying placards, streamers and a coffin – marched from a mosque in the village of Santa Barbara to Plaza Pershing in downtown Zamboanga where their leaders and Islamic preachers spoke about the poor plight of the evacuees.
Gammar Hassan, one of the refugee leaders, said more than 100 people had died from diseases the past months in evacuations sites and the deaths are continuing due to poor health services and malnutrition and lack medical and emergency facilities there.
More than 120,000 had been displaced in September last year following attacks by about 400 Moro National Liberation Front rebels in Zamboanga City. The attacks sparked three weeks of street battles that killed and wounded over 400 people. At least 6 villages were burned to the ground due to the fighting, although there were unconfirmed reports that arsonists were behind some of the burning of houses in predominantly Muslim villages even after the fighting stopped.
Hassan said the government has prevented them from returning to their villages and has forced the refugees to relocation sites far away. He said majority of the refugees have opposed the government’s relocation plan to put them in other areas saying it would be extremely difficult for them to rebuild their lives.
The refugees, many of them Tausug from Sulu ; Yakan, from Basilan; and indigenous Badjao tribe from Tawi-Tawi province – engaged in fishing and other traditional livelihoods – were being relocated to the far villages of Tulungatung and Taluksangay from their original habitat in the coastal villages of Rio Hondo and Mariki and other areas. Some female refugees have resorted to prostitution just to be able to survive because government aid has already stopped.
The government has built bunkhouses as temporary shelters to those affected by the violence, but it also warned that villagers who are not natives of Zamboanga would not be allowed to return to their former abode, unless they can provide certificates to show they are landowners.
While others protested the relocation plan, many also praised the local government for providing them a living quarter and were elated by their new bunkhouses houses, saying it greatly helped them in rebuilding their family and future. The P10-million bunkhouses, built by the army, were funded by the Department of Social Welfare and Development.
Human Rights Watch
The Human Rights Watch also said the government is subjecting the refugees to arbitrary relocation and prohibiting them from returning to their homes.
It said the Zamboanga City government has already transferred hundreds of these displaced residents, who have been camping in a coastal evacuation center the past seven months, to an elementary school several kilometers away, but when classes start in June, the city plans to move them again to government-built shelters that will serve as “transitional sites.”
The displaced residents have not been consulted regarding the transfers or their final resettlement site, which amounts to a forced eviction from their original homes, it said.
“The plight of Zamboanga’s displaced reflects an unacceptable failure by the Philippine government to ensure the safety and welfare of thousands of people forced to flee the September fighting. Rather than addressing return and resettlement in accordance with international law, the government is pushing forward a relocation process that is disregarding their basic rights,” Phelim Kine, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said.
He said the local government also prohibited displaced residents from the city’s Rio Hondo and Mariki villages from returning to rebuild their homes and instead declared the area of the two villages a “no build zone” to protect the areas’ mangrove forests.
The government justifies this decision by citing the National Integrated Protected Areas System Act, which prohibits settlement in areas that have “unique physical and biological significance” that should be “protected against destructive human exploitation.”
However, Kine said this decision will effectively permanently displace thousands of ethnic Badjao, a tribe of traditional fishermen who have lived in the two villages since fleeing ethnic conflict in nearby Sulu province in the 1960s.
The UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement provide that “states are under a particular obligation to protect against the displacement of indigenous peoples, minorities, peasants, pastoralists and other groups with a special dependency on and attachment to their lands.”
While the Zamboanga City government has prohibited the original residents from resettling in the Rio Hondo and Mariki villages, the city’s three billion peso (US$67 million) Zamboanga City Roadmap to Recovery and Reconstruction plan, specifically designates the area that includes Rio Hondo, Mariki, and three other affected villages for the construction of buildings and infrastructures, including “houses on stilts” and a base for the Philippine Navy, among others. That exception to the “no build zone” suggests that the government may eventually allow residential development in those areas.
“Forbidding evacuees from returning to their areas of residence by declaring them ‘no build zones’ is effectively a forced eviction that re-victimizes an already vulnerable population,” Kine said. “The government owes Zamboanga’s displaced residents a clear and open process in which they can meaningfully participate in their return or resettlement.”
Just last month, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees also raised concerns about the relocation’s impact on the rights of the displaced residents. It said the refugees “did not understand or have enough information about the move prior to the relocation.” (Mindanao Examiner)
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