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Southeast Asia | ||||
Peace In Mindanao If Muslims Given Their | ||||
2006-02-03 | ||||
Manila, 3 Feb. (AKI) - Lasting peace will only come to the Philippines' restive, mostly Muslim Mindanao region, if the country's Muslims are granted their full rights, no matter what the outcome of this weekend's talks between the government and separatist rebels, experts say. "The biggest stumbling block to peace in Mindanao remains the feeling amongst our Muslim brothers that they are [treated] as second-class citizens both politically and economically," says Jose Bayani Baylon, a Manila-based political analyst.
Saturday's "informal" meeting in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia is the seventh between representatives of the Manila government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) since formal talks were broken off by former Filipino president Joseph Estrada. Both sides have in recent weeks said that they are close to signing an agreement that will end the 40-year-long conflict which has claimed an estimated 120,000 lives.
The population of Mindanao, the second largest island in the Philippines archipelago was almost wholly Muslim or animist until the Manila government started after World War II to encourage people from other regions to migrate there. Today Muslims make up a mere 18 pecent of the island's population. "In part this [position] is due to the Manila-centric policies of [successive] governments, but it is also due to the corrupt practices of Filipino Muslim political leaders over the years," says Baylon. The failure of past accords between Manila and the MILF's predecessor, the Moro National Liberation Front, don't augur well for the current round of talks, Baylon says. "Add to this the growing militancy of Islam in the country, which is the only [mostly] Catholic nation in Asia, and you have the ingredients for a highly volatile situation," he says. Mindanao's separatist tendencies are rooted in a profound sense of Muslim alienation, agrees Zainudin S. Malang, director of Mindanao's Bangsamoro Center for Law and Policy.
Muslims meanwhile remain inadequately represented in the two-house parliament, where out of 236 members of Congress, only 12 are Muslim. There are no Muslims in the Senate. Mindanao is among the poorest regions in the Philippines with most of its meagre external investments coming from abroad rather than from other parts if the country. | ||||
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#7 sans Hashish |
Posted by: Frank G 2006-02-03 23:15 |
#6 "18%" is a majority??? It's islamic math. Just divide by zero. |
Posted by: ed 2006-02-03 23:12 |
#5 Amok is well known among Christians. I b'lieve that when the Vikings employed the techniques, they were called berserkers. |
Posted by: trailing wife 2006-02-03 23:07 |
#4 "18%" is a majority??? |
Posted by: JosephMendiola 2006-02-03 22:58 |
#3 Some comments - Baylon is a Muslim apologist, sort of a Filipino Ward Churchill. Mindanao was not mostly Muslim in 1945; it has been receiving Christian settlers for hundreds of years. All its major cities were Christian early last century. Philippine Muslims are not deprived; they are ignored, for good reasons. They typically do not welcome business investment in their areas. What they really want is free land and tribute, essentially. Their "ancestral domain" is populated with millions of Christian settlers. The hard sell here is going to be the Christian majority in Mindanao. There are a lot more of them than Muslims, and they are feisty. Amok is common to all Malays, which includes both Christian and Muslim Filipinos. Amok is well known among Christians. |
Posted by: buwaya 2006-02-03 22:50 |
#2 frenzied by hatred and hashish Yes, and in that order. |
Posted by: Seafarious 2006-02-03 16:11 |
#1 You want your rights? Sure. Here ya' go. Bang! You have the right to remain dead. Anything you might have had to say wasn't worth listening to anyway. You have the right to a shallow grave. You have the right to be wrapped in pigskin and tossed casually into that grave. You have the right to have dirt shovelled in your face. You hae the right to now remain forecer silent. Thanks. Have a nice day. |
Posted by: FOTSGreg 2006-02-03 15:55 |