MILF PEACE TALKS WITH GRP STALLED: MILF CALLS FOR DEFENSE OF THE HOMELAND

COTABATO CITY -- Moro Islamic Liberation Front chairman Murad Ebrahim has called on his fellow Muslims and members of the indigenous communities to stand up together and defend their "homeland."

Murad issued the call following last week's stalemate in the peace negotiations over the ancestral domain issue.

"In our 30 years of struggle, we have already experienced so much hardships and sufferings. As regards our homeland, only the mountains for the non-Islamized natives and the marshes are left to us (Moro). So, we should stand united in defending our homeland," Murad said during a meeting with MILF supporters and lumad leaders in Sultan Kudarat, Maguindanao on Friday.

Mohaqher Iqbal, MILF chief negotiator, said Murad's statement carried no malice nor bellicose intent.

He said the MILF has no intention to declare war even though the issue on territory remains unresolved.

Iqbal said Murad was simply stating the fact that the Moro and the indigenous peoples have already lost their possessions to settlers.

Historians recorded that the first batch of Christian settlers from the Visayas and Luzon arrived in Mindanao in 1912 during the American colonial period.

They were immediately given tracts of land by the Americans, who were then running the Philippine government.

Cotabato Archbishop Orlando Quevedo, former president of the Catholic Bishop's Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), said in a paper that the migration from Luzon and the Visayas "made the once dominant Moro population into a minority and marginalized them."

Quevedo said that in 1913, the estimated Moro population of Mindanao was 324,816 or 76 percent of the island's total population while there were 193,882 non-Moros. He said 26 years later, the Moro population was only 34 percent of the total population.

By 1990, Quevedo said, the Moro population plunged to only 19 percent of the total Mindanao population of 14,269,456.

"We will just protect our rights because we have no more lands left," Iqbal said.

MILF Chair, Hadji Murad said one of solutions to the decades-old Bangsamoro rebellion and the problem of the other indigenous people is the return of their ancestral domain.

"When we entered into peace negotiations with Manila, we asserted that part of the solution to our problem in Mindanao is the restitution of our ancestral domain to the Bangsamoro Juridical Entity," he said.

Murad said the territory of the Bangsamoro Juridical Entity may automatically include all areas in Mindanao that are predominantly populated by the Muslims.

He said the MILF has always considered the fact that "we just cannot drive away the settlers."

"Christians will be entitled to a freedom of choice whether or not they would opt to join the Bangsamoro Juridical Entity," he said.

On the issue of implementing Islamic Law under a future political settlement, Murad assured lumad and non-Muslims that the law would only be applied to Muslims.

"Nobody will be forced to convert into Islam," he said.



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